by Burl Barer
A few days after receiving Doersch’s fax, Feather requested adoption by Gelo and her husband. “She wanted to be able to use our last name, that she wanted to know that she was going to be safe and in our home forever, and not ever have to leave.”
The desire for adoption did not spring fully grown from Feather’s heart in a sudden burst of inspiration. Adoption was an ongoing topic at Gelo’s, and Feather witnessed the process firsthand. Gelo took Feather’s request seriously, advising her to discuss it with her court-appointed guardian.
“Gelo’s remarkable sensitivity to Feather’s personal issues,” said a woman familiar with Gelo’s unquestioned dedication to those in her charge, “is well known in the foster-care community. Gelo’s own life, and personal challenges, are not only inspirational, but mirror in many ways those of her troubled foster children.”
Born and raised in a North Dakota alcoholic home, Gelo was drinking out of her dad’s beer bottles as early as she can remember. Her first major drunk was at thirteen. At fourteen, she met her first husband. He was nineteen and on his way to Vietnam for his first of two tours of duty.
Gelo was always with kids older than herself, and by age sixteen, she was spending most of her free time on the college campus drinking three to four nights a week. When her husband came home after two years in Vietnam, his drinking fit right in with her alcohol-based lifestyle. They partied every weekend, said Gelo, and she did “controlled” drinking a couple of times during the week.
Pregnant at seventeen, she denied the condition until almost her sixth month, and kept up her drinking lifestyle. Two days after Gelo’s eighteenth birthday, her first child was born. A daughter, Faith, was only six pounds twelve ounces, and eighteen inches long. All through school and with the subsequent birth of two more children, Gelo realized that Faith was different. She struggled in school and with relationships, but she graduated from high school at nineteen without much special help from the schools.
Gelo stopped drinking when Faith was eight years old, divorced her first husband, and married again five years later to another alcoholic, but one who was in recovery. Moving to Washington State, they became foster parents. Nothing prepared them, however, for the difficulties of their first foster children. One day her second daughter came home from high school and told her about Linda LaFever, a woman from whom she heard about fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effect (FAS/FAE) are disorders of the brain resulting from exposure to alcohol while in the mother’s womb. FAS is the most severe form; FAE, although not as physically visible in its outward signs, has equally serious behavioral impact. LaFever’s son, Danny, was seriously affected by her drinking during pregnancy.
The most serious characteristics of FAS/FAE are the invisible symptoms of neurological damage, including mental illness, disrupted school experience, incarceration, alcohol/drug abuse, and inappropriate sexual behavior. Almost half of individuals with FAS/FAE between the ages of twelve to twenty commit crimes against persons, such as theft, burglary, assault, murder, domestic violence, running away, and child molestation.
Gelo’s young foster children manifested many traits symptomatic of FAS. They were all obstinate and defiant, failed to bond with anyone, had no sense of personal boundaries, and did self-injurious things. Gelo had her two foster boys diagnosed; both had FAS. Faith, Gelo’s firstborn child, was also affected.
Feather Rahier was part of the Gelo household in July 1996 when the Gelos adopted two of their foster children, a boy and a girl. The boy was diagnosed with atypical FAS and his sister with neurobehavioral disorder—alcohol and cocaine exposed. They both had a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The young boy also had reactive attachment disorder, oppositional defiance, and conduct disorder. The female had post-traumatic stress disorder, separation anxiety, and depression.
Soon another child, a boy, was added to the mix. A succession of other foster children came and went before the boy’s brother came to live with the Gelos. Two years later, another brother joined the family—a delicate child afflicted with febrile seizures. During the course of getting a CAT scan for the seizures, it was found that he had diffuse atrophy through his entire brain. There was a hole in the left temporal lobe attributed to alcohol exposure.
In June 1995, one month after Feather Rahier moved in, Gelo received a call from a caseworker asking her to take a ten-day-old baby who had been a full-term breech delivery on the streets of Seattle, but the infant only weighed a little over five pounds. He almost suffocated at birth, and tested positive for syphilis. Fetal alcohol syndrome was strongly suspected.
When the child was three months old, a neurologist said that the boy would always be severely retarded. “He may never roll over or even respond to people,” reported the specialist. Other doctors speculated that he would not live a full year. “He did not sit up alone until eleven months,” recalled Gelo. “He crawled at thirteen months, walked with an orthopedic walker at twenty-two months, and on his second birthday took his first independent steps. He survived and thrived, although his mother didn’t.”
Shortly after requesting that her parental rights be terminated so the child could be adopted by “the only mom and dad he has ever known,” her drinking and drugging took their toll. She had cirrhosis, meningitis, hepatitis, renal failure, sepsis, and had been assaulted and beaten at a party. After two weeks in a coma and on a respirator, she woke up, looked at Julie Gelo and the pictures of her children, and passed on. “She was twenty-eight years old at her death, and both her parents died in their early thirties from alcohol,” recalled Gelo. The adoption was completed in October 1995.
Illumed by the above history, Feather Rahier’s request for adoption by Gelo would appear both logical and prudent. Seeking outward stability as an anchor for inward instability, Feather sought a situation of inclusive permanence.
Sadly, there was nothing permanent in Feather’s immediate future, least of all her own moods. Troubled and volatile, Feather was often found crying in her closet. “The next minute, she could be exploding in anger,” said Gelo. “It was very hard on her and on the rest of our family.”
The youngster’s pediatrician wrote to the prosecutor’s office asking, if possible, that Feather be excused from having to testify. “He felt that all of this was having a real negative impact on her mental health,” said Gelo. “He was afraid that we would end up losing her totally.”
Gelo repeatedly assured Feather that everyone was doing everything in his or her power to keep everything as easy, nontraumatic, and safe for her as possible. These assurances failed to calm Feather’s fears.
“I would go in to check on her at night, and sometimes she would be thrashing around in her sleep. If I went to lay my hand on her shoulder, and went to talk with her and say, ‘Feather, it’s okay,’ she would kind of thrash at me with her hands and say, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, leave me alone.’”
Feather’s behavior became more troublesome as the date of Clark’s trial grew closer. “She was attempting to draw attention to herself or cry out for help in some ways,” said Gelo. “She would come and tell me what she was doing and they were behaviors that she knew would get consequences, or knew would get attention, you know, from me and from the other people in her life. And it was things like accepting a bottle of cider from a winery down the hill from us that had alcohol in it and drinking part of that bottle, but bringing the rest of it home and giving it to me.”
Feather also wore very provocative clothing to school—outfits that were not provocative when first purchased. “She was taking all of the new clothing that we had bought her and cutting it up and making it very sexualized—cutting, you know, the pants to be very short, or the T-shirt, so that they would expose her midriff,” Gelo said. “That isn’t what she would leave the house in the morning with, but she would carry these clothes in her backpack and change. And I would get calls from the school asking that I bring her more appropriate clothin
g.”
One day, Feather vanished from school after first period. Students and teachers overheard her say that she was leaving with two boys. “The story was that they were going to a boy’s house,” Gelo recalled, “because the boys wanted to do drugs. Feather wanted to go along to do her ‘wild thing’ that day. She was back in school by the beginning of fourth hour, and didn’t appear intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. Feather knew that when she got home, she would be getting consequences at home, and yet she came home straight off the bus.”
Advised by Gelo that skipping class was not a prudent decision, and one that entailed consequences, Feather had no objections. “She was not the least defiant,” said Gelo. “She was pleasant and cooperative.”
Spring break started that day, and Feather was put on restriction. “Again, there was no arguing, not even the sullen look that I would have seen from any of my other teenagers. Saturday morning, she got up very compliant, asked me, ‘What can I do to help you today?’”
Feather helped with the children while Gelo went grocery shopping. “She asked if she could go outside and rollerblade, and my husband said it was okay as long as she was on the corner of our house, and not across the street. That was fine with Feather, it seemed. She soon returned, and my husband suggested that they go downstairs and watch a movie together. He went on down and waited for her, but she didn’t come down.”
He looked upstairs, and out on the deck, but Feather wasn’t there. “He looked out the living-room window just in time to see her rollerblading by our house with a backpack on her back and a little bag in her hand. And a few minutes later,” said Gelo, “my nineteen-year-old daughter, Faith, came to our house and she had seen Feather down at the 7-Eleven with what looked like a cigarette in her hand. By that time, I had come home, and we went down looking for her and she was gone; we couldn’t find her. And,” said Julie Gelo, in 1997, “that’s the last time anyone has seen or heard from her.”
Rather than again relive her childhood trauma, Feather packed basic belongings into a backpack, then rollerbladed down the block, around the corner, and out of sight.
She would never be a witness for the prosecution against the man charged in the brutal, sexually motivated slaying of seven-year-old Roxanne Doll—the big man from the dark garage whose fractured family, abusive upbringing, and interpersonal malaise were tragically similar to her own—a young man who manifested each stereotypical trait of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: Richard Mathew Clark.
Chapter 2
Richard Mathew Clark entered the world as the fruit of an adulterous womb, on August 18, 1968, and was the youngest of three children. His mother, Kathleen Ann-Marie Feller, had married George Walter-Burton Clark Jr. when she was fifteen years old and already pregnant. The age at which Kathleen began drinking is unknown, but her adult years were spent ceaselessly under the influence.
“When my mom got pregnant with me,” said George Clark II, “her folks didn’t approve of my father or my mother’s actions, getting pregnant out of wedlock and such. I believe they held it against us, maybe me, but they didn’t have much to do with us.”
There was an inarguable difference between Richard, his sister, Leslie, and four year older George Clark II. Richard Clark’s father was Gordon Nickel-son. This parental faux pas contributed to the Clarks’ separation when Richard was sixteen months old, and their subsequent divorce. Carol Clark, the children’s aunt, good-hearted and protective, often looked after the youngsters.
“She came and stayed with us when Richard was first born,” recalled George Clark II. “She was a good cook, and I always had lunch for school.”
The home was not long without a father figure or Kathleen without a man. Neither did her reproductive system remain idle. Commuting to the eastern Washington town of Moses Lake to drive a potato truck, Kathleen met Norman Hastings.
“When she came back from Moses Lake, he would come over and visit, stay the weekend,” recalled George Clark II, “and that’s how my younger sister Jennet Hastings came about.”
After the relationship with Hastings petered out, another man entered her life. “He had three kids of his own, so we were kinda like the Brady Bunch,” said George. “After him came Bob Smith, and they had kids together too.”
Bob Smith was known for continuous consumption of strong drink with his wife, his strong opinions on child training, and his even stronger methods of behavior modification. “He beat us,” said George flatly. “He beat us with a belt, a fireplace poker, electrical cords, and his fists. He took a liking to Jennet, and she was spared. His own daughter, Crystal, could do no wrong. But he beat the rest of us—Richard and me more than he beat Leslie. Maybe because we were boys, or maybe because he didn’t hate her as much as he hated us.”
According to George Clark II, the three kids—Leslie, he, and Richard—would wait in line for their beatings. “We had to watch each other get beat,” he recalled. “What made me scream the most was the fireplace poker that he used on us.”
Unlike his older brother, Richard Clark didn’t scream. “Richard would grit his teeth,” said George, “he wouldn’t cry until after Bob was gone. Me and Leslie would scream like crazy, but Richard very rarely cried until after it was over.”
According to Aunt Carol, shortly after Kathleen married Bob Smith, she picked up Richard Clark for a visit. “I took him home with me for the weekend,” said Carol. “He had bruises up and down his back and his legs from being beat with a belt. He cried and couldn’t sleep for two days. I wrote his mother a letter. I told Kathleen that if I ever [saw] anything like that again, I would report Bob to the authorities.”
Because of that admonition, Carol Clark was not permitted to visit again for three years. “I next saw Richard when he was eight years old,” recalled Carol Clark. “My mom and I had gone to the doctor’s office for her appointment, and I saw Richard come out of the doctor’s room with his mother. And I didn’t know if it was Richard or not because he had lost so much weight and his teeth were protruding out of his mouth. Well, at that time I asked Kathleen if I could bring Richard home with me and keep him because he looked so bad. And she thought it over and she did let me bring him home eventually and keep him because of what was going on. He must have been about eight years old at the time,” said Carol Clark. “Richard lived with me for two years straight.”
Times were always tough in the Bob Smith household. Kathleen broke her neck when Richard was very young and never worked again. Smith did seasonal berry picking, sold marijuana, and poached deer to obtain meat.
“The Clark side of the family was always good to us,” recalled George. His aunt Carol verified the accuracy of his assessment. “Members of our family bought food and clothing for the children,” she said, “and one time I even went to Richard’s school and gave him some money.”
Carol desired neither recognition nor praise for this surreptitious expression of honest, loving concern. Sadly, Bob Smith got wind of his stepson’s financial windfall. “When Bob found out,” recalled George Clark, “Richard was beaten as punishment.”
Frequent school absences characterized the Clark brothers’ school records. “We were kept home from school,” explained George, “because the beating left us so bruised and swollen. Smith didn’t want some teacher seeing the signs of severe abuse.”
According to George Clark, Smith was continually under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, and he seemed to concentrate his meager mental efforts on making George, Richard, and Leslie’s lives miserable.
“When the family lived in Arlington, Washington,” explained George, “we were forced to sleep in a woodshed. When we moved to Darrington, Smith bought a two-bedroom double-wide trailer. Then he built what he called a bunkhouse fifty yards away from the main mobile home. It had electricity, but no heat. That’s where Richard and I lived. We were only allowed in the house for meals.
“To keep us kids out of the house,” he explained, “Bob would make us go out into the yard and
pick up rocks and stack them up into piles. Once we finished that, he had us move the piles around the yard.”
According to George Clark II, Bob Smith’s treatment of Richard was not only physically painful, but also emotionally humiliating. “There was one event that I’ll never forget as long as I live.”
Richard and Jennet, young and mischievous, got up in the middle of the night and ate up all of sister Leslie’s Camp Fire Girls cookies. “There were dozens of them,” said George, “and they ate them all. My mom and Bob were responsible for the money. Bob went down to some store and bought this big cigar, very big around. That night we had roast beef, mashed potatoes, a great big dinner. And Richard had to stand next to the kitchen table with a glass of water, had to eat that cigar while we ate our dinner.”
The sight of his younger brother gagging on the cigar diminished George’s appetite. “I couldn’t eat my dinner, and I don’t think any of us kids could. Richard was shaking like a leaf, and Bob was telling him that if he didn’t eat it, he was going to get the hell beat out of him.”
When asked why Kathleen allowed Bob to beat her children, George gave the question serious consideration. “I figure Mom must have really loved Bob Smith a lot to let him do that to us. That’s all I can figure. Mom must have really loved him.”
Richard Clark was fourteen years old when his loving yet terminally inebriated mother died in an auto accident on September 19, 1982. “She was full of drugs and alcohol when she died,” said Carol. “She hit a bridge on Highway 9.”
“The next morning,” recalled George, “Leslie took the girls, Jennet and Crystal, out in one corner of the yard, and I took Richard out to the other corner of the yard and told him of our mom’s death. I don’t know how he was affected by it—I was in shock; Bob was in Alaska. He and our mother were not on good terms at that time.”