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

by Gay Courter

  “Come on, Julie, don’t be stupid,” Nicole said.

  “Well, Julie,” I said with a tense laugh, “actually they do. His name is Squire.”

  We met at the Pasta Place. I brought Julie, Nicole, and Simone. The Slaters arrived with their grandsons, Jared and Zane, who were six and seven. Both were freckled redheads, but Jared was skinny, serious, and wore glasses, while Zane was considerably taller, more robust, and talkative. Julie plopped herself down between them, saying, “I always wanted two brothers.”

  My heart fluttered. Had I set them up to expect too much? Soon they were chattering away. Nicole was next to Jeanne and their resemblance in person was even more striking than it had appeared in the photos. Even their bodies had matching curves, and I could see Nicole raiding Jeanne’s closet at the first opportunity. Vic and Simone were talking about sports. Both liked the Miami Dolphins and the Atlanta Braves. Vic coached the boys’ ball team but said he preferred golf, and Simone admitted she was on the school’s golf team.

  Considering what was at stake here, everyone was remarkably relaxed. There were jokes and giggles and tastes of different pasta sauces and lots of thank yous for the garlic bread and extra sodas.

  During a lull in the chatter, I overheard Zane talking to Julie. “We haven’t seen our father since we were babies and we can’t live with our mother anymore, so we’re going to stay with Granny and Grampy forever.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” Jared said.

  “Yes, I do, right, Gramps?”

  Vic nodded while he chewed. After he swallowed, he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “We have custody of these boys. They’ve been here three years already, and as far as we are concerned, they’ll grow up in our house.”

  “That’s because of what happened to our mother,” Zane continued.

  “Zane!” Jared admonished under his breath.

  “I can tell them anything I want,” Zane protested. By now he had everyone’s attention. “You see, our mom’s in jail for a long time, at least until we grow up.”

  Nobody moved. This was news to me. I saw Julie staring at Nicole. Simone turned away. Nicole glanced down at her plate. Julie looked at me for permission. I gave her a little nod.

  “That’s okay,” Julie said. “Our dad’s in jail too.”

  The phone rang within fifteen minutes after I had returned home. “We want them, any time, any way,” Vic said.

  “Well … we do have a problem right now with Nicole.” I explained that the Lambs were putting too much pressure on Nicole to conform to their way of life.

  “I thought so,” Vic said. After the spaghetti dinner, the Slaters and Colby girls had exchanged phone numbers. Already Nicole had called to talk to Jeanne.

  “Jeanne said Nicole sounded lonely.”

  “She is.”

  “We have a bed ready and waiting.”

  I explained the problems with informally moving the children around, the fact that Nicole would come with no financial subsidies or medical insurance, and her mother could jerk her away at any time.

  “How can I say this without sounding like a lunatic?” Vic asked. “We just feel that somehow it was meant to be.”

  “Me too, but that isn’t going to hold up in court.”

  We laughed. Then I became more serious. I explained about my court report and the fact that Mrs. Hunt deeply resented me at the moment.

  “May I have your permission to call Mrs. Hunt myself?” Vic asked.

  “It can’t hurt,” I said, then wondered what in the world he would say to Mrs. Hunt.

  “It’s done,” Vic said on the phone two days later. “Nicole is moving here this weekend.”

  I was astonished by his explanation. Nicole had spoken to Jeanne again and had had a heart-to-heart talk. Jeanne had called Fay Lamb at work that afternoon, who admitted that they were tired of being harassed by Nicole’s requests to see her sisters. Then, without consulting me or anyone else, Jeanne had phoned Lottie Hunt, introduced herself, and asked permission to take her daughter. Mrs. Hunt said she never did like Fay Lamb, but didn’t know the Slaters. Jeanne agreed that Lottie should not make a decision until she met her, but Mrs. Hunt said she was in a fishing tournament that afternoon. Jeanne left work early and went to meet her at the marina. Using a copy of Mrs. Lamb’s power of attorney, Jeanne whited out the Lambs’ name, made another copy, wrote in hers, and took it to Mrs. Hunt, who after fifteen minutes with Jeanne, signed on the dotted line.

  “Amazing,” I said. “Jeanne’s incredible.”

  “I was worried you might think that she stepped on your toes,” Vic said.

  “Not at all. I’m impressed by her determination.”

  “When Jeanne wants something, there’s no stopping her.”

  “Then we’re going to get along fine.”

  As I wrote up my notes, I realized that I had been the Colby children’s Guardian ad Litem for one month and three days. Because of my experience with other cases, I had resolved to make some changes fast, but I could never have predicted that so much could have happened in so short a time. Totaling my time sheets, I already had spent sixty-seven hours on the phone, at meetings, and with the children, and had driven 354 miles. That was a lot for a given month, yet thirty-three days later the sisters were in better homes, two of the girls were reunited, the HRS attorney was on my side, and the family that had come forward to offer the three children a permanent placement was now caring for one of the girls. Buoyed with so many successes, I felt the best course was to forge ahead so that all three could live with the Slaters under some legally binding ruling. As yet, I knew nothing about adoption law, nor the process of getting the rights of the natural parents terminated.

  In recent months, though, the nation had been privy to the most famous termination of parental rights case ever: Gregory K., which had influenced my direction on the Colby case. Gregory K. had been living at the ranch where Cory Stevenson had been placed for a while. While at the ranch, a local attorney, George Russ, came for a tour and spent some time with Gregory. Shortly thereafter he became Gregory’s foster parent and wanted to adopt him. Early on, before the media became involved, I had heard about the situation. Mr. Russ’s law partner’s daughter and my son had both attended the same boarding school and now were at the same university, and our families had become fast friends. In fact, I had asked George Russ’s partner to take Lydia, the girl who had been falsely accused of a crime, when I had been searching for a home for her. They might have been interested if Lydia hadn’t required a Pentecostal home. Knowing my interest in child abuse cases, this family had told me about Gregory being taken in by the Russ family even though they already had eight children of their own.

  A few weeks after hearing the Russes’ side of the story, Nancy had called me about a “special case” she wanted me to handle.

  “This situation originated as a typical termination of parental rights case,” Nancy began, “but has developed another unusual dimension.”

  She explained that before the case had been transferred to the county where the Russes resided, it had originated in the Orlando area, the one county in Florida where the bar association had determined that only pro bono attorneys could serve as guardians. In theory this provided legal representation for every child, but in reality the lawyers did not have time to investigate or monitor cases the way the volunteers could. Gregory K.’s first Guardian ad Litem had never visited him and had made his recommendations by reading the file. I laughed at this, as did Nancy. If I had gone strictly by Lydia’s file, for instance, I might have believed that she had put a baby in a microwave oven. Also, if a guardian did not know the child, she could not feel the urgency of her loneliness or see for herself what had to be done. If the guardian did not meet the natural parents, she could never fathom how irresponsible or self-centered or, on occasion, well meaning they were. If the guardian never visited the foster parents and siblings, she could not evaluate what might be in a child’s best interests.


  While this seems obvious to experienced guardians, it apparently is not to a vast portion of those who have the legal responsibility for children in the justice system. Many “advocate programs” work from the papers only. Gregory K. was to prove—in headlines—the foolishness of this approach.

  Nancy told me that Gregory K. needed a guardian to replace the one who had neglected him. However, because the system (and his first guardian) had already failed to perform on his behalf, Gregory K. had hired his own lawyer, Jerri Blair, to terminate his parents’ parental rights in civil court. While dependency cases are sealed from the press, civil cases are not. When the local reporter on the courthouse beat saw the docket, he asked the clerk what sort of proceeding this was to be.

  “The kid wants to divorce his parents,” the clerk said by way of a flippant explanation. What Gregory really desired was to have his mother’s and father’s parental rights terminated so that he could be adopted permanently by the Russ family, and since nobody with the authority to do so (either HRS or his attorney guardian) had taken these steps, his attorney had devised a clever way around the problem by filing the papers in the child’s own name.

  The reporter filed a small story with a provocative headline: BOY WANTS TO DIVORCE PARENTS. “A few national papers have already picked up the story,” Nancy said, “and I’m afraid the guardian on this case might not only have to handle a tricky legal situation but will also have to deal with the media. Besides myself, you’re the only one around here with that experience,” Nancy concluded.

  “What’s the story with his parents?” I asked.

  “They’ve been totally irresponsible, and finally this kid has decided that he has been kicked around long enough by both them and the system. The file shows that during one eighteen-month period in foster care, he was placed in five different foster homes, shelters, and institutions.”

  “Sounds like Cory Stevenson all over again.”

  “Is there any hope that his mother will mature?”

  “I doubt it. There’s no evidence that she has written, phoned, or visited him in more than a year.”

  “Poor kid.”

  “You’ll take the case?” Nancy asked hopefully.

  Inwardly I groaned. Gregory K.’s home was a round-trip of over a hundred miles on two-lane country roads. Still, I wanted to champion a kid who’d made it out of the same institution where Cory Stevenson had been so miserable. Also, if it did make sense to support the termination decision, the Guardian ad Litem could file papers on Gregory’s behalf. So even if the court did not accept the child’s petition in his own name, they could consider one filed by a guardian.

  “The kid is really happy at the Russes. They are a warm, loving family and they’ve gone through the licensing procedure to become official foster parents just to make a stable home for him. He told George, and his foster mother, Lizabeth, that he did not ever want to live with his mother again. Who can blame him? He’s only stayed with her a total of eight months during the past eight years and his father is an alcoholic.”

  Nancy went on to explain that Gregory, like all children, are literally the tangible property of parents. His mother, Rachael, had signed a performance agreement with HRS that required her to attend parenting classes, seek psychological counseling, and to prove that she was emotionally and financially stable before she could regain custody of her three sons. After she moved to another state, leaving Gregory in Florida, she did not meet her commitments. HRS assumed that she would be willing to terminate her parental rights, but as soon as Rachael heard that his foster family was considering adopting Gregory, she hired an attorney to win him back. (Gregory’s father, Ralph Kingsley, agreed to a voluntary termination because he thought it was in his son’s best interests, and subsequently Ralph died in an accident before the appeals process was finished.)

  “Gregory has made up his mind that he will never agree to live with his mother again and asked to be the one to determine where he would live. George Russ gave Gregory the phone number of Jerri Blair, a local attorney, and she agreed to take his case.”

  “I think I have a conflict of interest,” I said slowly. “I’m already prejudiced in favor of George Russ because of my friendship with his colleague,” I admitted. “I’d still do it,” I said, “but if the press is going to crawl over this, they might uncover the fact that he has a compromised guardian.”

  Nancy agreed and accepted the case herself but asked if I’d work with her as a consultant, especially about media matters, which I agreed to do. Later, I would be grateful I did not take on this all-consuming case, which became a Newsweek cover story, a “20/20” special piece, the subject of two movies-of-the-week, as well as a high-profile broadcast trial. Through the legal process, both of Gregory’s biological parents made the rounds of daily talk shows and George Russ had to do the same to get Gregory’s story told. I had many reservations about how healthy this was for the family, or the legal situation, which became more adversarial with every round. (Eventually, Gregory’s case was transferred to Orlando, and a third Guardian ad Litem, also an attorney, was appointed for him. But unlike her predecessor, the last guardian did a thorough job of representing his interests. Her report clearly stated that Gregory K. should remain with the Russ family and that his parents should terminate their rights.)

  What was clear in the story of Gregory Kingsley was that this eleven-year-old boy had been neglected and abandoned by his parents. Much like Buddy Colby, Ralph Kingsley had a serious alcohol problem. And as with Lottie Hunt, Rachael Kingsley had a life complicated by poverty and difficult relationships with lovers and spouses. Now the Colby children had an offer of a permanent home, only they were luckier, because Gregory’s two brothers had not been included in his deal with the Russes.

  Gregory K. is a lesson in what typically happens when parents are asked to terminate parental rights. Suddenly these parents, who for years have ignored their children, decide that these same children are their most precious darlings and they will do anything to get them back again. Aided by court-appointed attorneys, the parents often take positions contrary to the best wishes or best interests of their child. Suddenly it becomes more important to reestablish their claims to the child than to place the child in the best possible situation. Because the attorney works in the best interest of the parent’s rights, the parent is placed in an antagonistic position to the child. This fighting does nothing but delay safety and permanence for the child.

  Parental rights. The precious right to be the parent to your own child. When the Gregory K. situation exploded, I had felt that if everyone—including the biological parents—worked together as a team, Gregory’s adoption might have been worked out amicably. Might there be a way to present adoption to the Colby parents so they would understand that it was in their own best interests to promote a stable environment for their daughters? After all, it was only a few years until Simone was eighteen. At that time she could live wherever she wanted—with either parent or anyone else. Thus termination of parental rights is merely a temporary maneuver until a child came of age.

  What if Gregory K.’s mother had been willing to vacate her “temporary” rights to control her child so he could remain at the Russes? What if Gregory had wanted to continue visitation with his mother, his two brothers, his father, while still returning to the Russes as his home base? I realized that Gregory came from a very conflicted family, but perhaps mediators could have found a way for everyone to have many of their needs met. Gregory had required stability. He needed to know that someone would be there for him, but would it have hurt him to retain the love of his parents while adding the Russes to his list of people who cared for him?

  The media attention fueled the feud. The Gregory K. case disintegrated into a shouting match on talk shows and became fodder for debate by columnists. Yet only one person knew what was best for Gregory—and that was the child himself. Gregory made certain that he was listened to.

  On September 26, 1992, Circuit Judge Thomas
S. Kirk stated that Rachael Kingsley, Gregory’s mother, had “lied consistently” and announced that he believed “by clear and convincing evidence, almost beyond a reasonable doubt in this case, that this child has been abandoned … and neglected … and it is certainly in his best interests that her [the mother’s] parental rights be terminated immediately.” (His father had done so voluntarily.)

  Gregory won—not only his new family, but the right for a child to fight a case in his own name. Judge Thomas Kirk ruled that since “Gregory has the greatest interest in the outcome of this litigation” he could be given standing to pursue his petition for termination of parental rights in the lower court. When the case was appealed, the State of Florida argued that Gregory had no direct capacity to question the state’s conduct toward him, even though he was permitted to remain in foster care considerably longer than the mandated maximum times allowed by statute. Thus the Florida appellate court reversed Judge Kirk’s decision. The ruling stated that Gregory K. never had the legal right to ask for termination of parental rights in his own name, since children have no cause to file lawsuits because HRS and adult representatives (i.e., guardians) are responsible for filing cases that represent a child’s best interests. However, the termination of parental rights from his mother was upheld on the grounds of abandonment. The adoption by the Russ family went back to the trial court for further proceedings without disrupting Gregory’s placement in that home, and eventually he was adopted by the Russ family.

  The Colbys didn’t need to make either headlines or case law, but they required a permanent adopted home just as much as Gregory had. In order to make this happen, I would have to devise a structured approach and unite the participants in a common goal. Also, the standard rules of HRS procedure would have to be bent. To prevent the animosity that flared in the Gregory K. case, these maneuvers would have to be accomplished before the respective attorneys became creative with their petitions, or before the children wilted and became discouraged.