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

by Gay Courter

  “Yes, well …,” she murmured distractedly. Then she made eye contact with me. “Please consider that she is in a strictly controlled program and we can’t confuse her by having her new values compromised by another counselor with a different set of doctrines.”

  “Guardians are not counselors, however we do try to be certain that our children are receiving every necessary service.”

  I watched Alice Shaw purse her lips with disapproval. “Are you suggesting that we might not be taking adequate care of her?”

  I resented having my words twisted to put me on the defensive. I took a deep breath and continued. “No matter what Lydia has done, or what facility she lives in, she is still an American citizen with legal rights, just as even convicted criminals have rights. And one of her rights is to speak freely to her appointed Guardian ad Litem. I will abide by your rules now, and since this situation is different than any I have encountered, I will see her without demanding privacy. But because this goes against my directives as well as the Guardian ad Litem guidelines, I will have to check with my supervisor about whether or not I will be required to speak with Lydia alone next time.”

  “When might you wish to return?”

  “In a week or so, or sooner if Lydia wishes.”

  “Our rules say visitors cannot come more often than once a month.”

  “Why don’t we discuss that later? Right now I am anxious to meet Lydia.”

  Alice Shaw opened her mouth, then decided against further comment. She went into Marjorie’s office and asked her to locate Lydia. In the meantime she gave me a tour of the downstairs, unlocking the chapel, the dining room, and well-equipped kitchen. “There are no sodas, candy, cakes or other sweets permitted because we must detoxify the children from their dependence on refined sugars and drugs.”

  Here was something with which I could wholeheartedly agree, and we talked about nutrition until Lydia was led into the empty classroom.

  Lydia stared at her feet until she was introduced, then looked at me as though she were going to have to undergo an upsetting medical procedure.

  “Hi,” I said but did not approach her or offer my hand.

  If Mrs. Shaw had said anything accurate about Lydia, the word “fragile” certainly described her. I had been expecting a tough cookie, a girl who could bully her sister and seem a real threat to her younger siblings, someone who needed a few months in jail to soften her hardened nature. But Lydia was a delicate, fine-boned young woman with streaky strawberry blonde hair and huge light-brown expressive eyes. She was dressed in a plaid pinafore with pink knit shirt, red socks, immaculate white sneakers. Lydia returned my smile with one of her own that seemed to slip out unexpectedly.

  “This is Miss Gay,” Marjorie said, then handed her a Bible to hold during the meeting. The counselor pulled out a chair from one of the student study carrels. “Why don’t you sit here,” she said to me. “I’m very busy so I won’t be able to stay with you.” With her chin she indicated Mrs. Shaw’s office and her expression seemed to conspire with me slightly. I was certain this was with Mrs. Shaw’s knowledge and felt they were playing some version of good cop/bad cop. “But I’ll be in and out,” she said, and went to the other side of the partition where we could not see her, though if she hovered nearby, she could hear us.

  I introduced myself to Lydia as her Guardian ad Litem. “Have you ever heard of that before?”

  “I’ve been in lots of programs and am used to all sorts of people messing with me so what difference does one more make?” she said without masking her irritation.

  “What sorts of people?”

  “You know, HRS people, public defenders, police, social workers, therapists. They all want to help me, but now that I have been saved I know that only Jesus can do that.” Lydia’s eyes shone with conviction.

  “Jesus must be making a big difference in your life,” I said softly. “I also can understand that I must look like one more in a long line of people you would rather not meet, but I’m different.”

  “Like how?”

  “First, I will be here for you until you are eighteen, no matter where you live, even if you run away again or go back to the juvenile detention center.”

  “I’m not running away or going back to JDC ever again!”

  “Good. But no matter what you do, I will still try to help you.” I handed her my card with the GAL office numbers, told her how to place a collect call.

  “I’m not allowed to use the phone here.”

  “Mrs. Shaw and I will have to work out who will be permitted to call whom and when. In the meantime, I will phone you at least once a week to check on you. And I will be visiting you too.”

  “They won’t even let my mom in. She came twice and brought me clothes from home, but we couldn’t see each other.”

  “Would you like to see your mother?”

  “Yes, but not my father. He isn’t my real father anyway.”

  I handed Lydia the Guardian ad Litem brochure. “Here are other ways I might assist you,” I said and read aloud from the pamphlet. “ ‘The Guardian ad Litem protects the child from insensitive questioning and the often harmful effects of being embroiled in the adversary court process.’ “ I waited a beat. “That means a fight in court where two sides have different opinions.”

  “I’ve had my own lawyer already,” she said with a superior sniff. “But I thought that lady from HRS was my legal guardian?”

  Lydia was not the only one who misunderstood this point. HRS, represented by the caseworker Mona Archibald, was indeed Lydia’s legal guardian under the courts. An HRS employee was the one who could sign her medical papers or withdraw her from school, while I, by representing her in the court proceedings, had other responsibilities, including making certain HRS did their job.

  “I realize it is confusing, but yes, Mrs. Archibald works for HRS and will be in charge of your case for the social service agency, but I will be the person who represents what you want and need.” I lowered my voice. “For instance, if you did not wish to stay here, I could help find you another placement.”

  “But I want to stay here!” Lydia responded loudly enough to have been overheard in Mrs. Shaw’s office. “I know it’s going to be tough, but they think I have what it takes to make it in the program.”

  I changed the subject. “What grade were you in when you left school?”

  “I dropped out twice, so I never finished ninth.”

  “Didn’t you like school?”

  “Some of it was okay.”

  “What subjects do you prefer?”

  “English. I want to be a writer.”

  When I grinned in response, Lydia gave me a challenging look. “Don’t you think I can write?”

  “Sure. It’s just surprising because that is what I do. I’m a writer.”

  “Really? Do you write poetry?”

  “Not much. I write books. But I like poetry. Who’s your favorite poet?”

  “Robert Frost. I had a book of his poems and I read about his life too.”

  “When I was your age, I memorized his poems.”

  “Do remember the one about the boy who died?”

  “You mean ‘Out, Out—’?”

  Lydia’s bright eyes glinted behind a film of tears. “Do you still know it by heart?”

  “Some of it,” I replied reluctantly because Mrs. Shaw would surely see any reference to this depressing poem as evidence of my leading Lydia to see the glass as half-empty.

  “Say it,” Lydia replied as a challenge.

  “I think it begins, ‘The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard/And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood.’ “

  “You do know it!” Lydia’s mouth gaped. “The part I like is when they say, ‘And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright./No one believed. They listened at his heart.’ “ Her voice quavered.

  “ ‘Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it,’ “ I filled in.

  Lydia skipped the next line and whispered t
he last one. “ ‘And they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.’ “ There was the briefest pause, then Lydia blurted, “I guess you know about Teddy.”

  “Teddy? No, who is he?”

  “My boyfriend. He was killed.”

  “Do you mean Teddy Kirby?” I asked very slowly as the grisly story came back to me. “The boy who disappeared and whose body was found a few months ago in the state forest?”

  “How do you know so much about him?”

  “It was in the papers,” I said, recalling how many of us who had sons around the same age had been shocked by the case. In fact, my husband had assisted Teddy’s father in transcribing some tape recordings to help the police find the murderer, who so far had eluded everyone. I decided against mentioning this coincidence to Lydia.

  “I loved him.” Lydia motioned for me to lean closer to her. “I was pregnant with his baby,” she whispered, “but they made me get rid of it. You know …”

  “An abortion,” I filled in and she nodded. “Who made you?”

  “My parents.”

  “And you didn’t want to?”

  “I suppose I did at the time, but if I had known what would happen to Teddy, or if I had known that it was a sin, I never would have agreed.”

  Just then Marjorie appeared from the other side of the room. “Lunch is almost over, Lydia. If you don’t join the others, you won’t get anything to eat.”

  My eyes locked with Lydia’s. “I’ll either call or see you next week.”

  Clasping the Bible to her chest, Lydia backed away from me, then hurried to the dining room. As I found my way out the back door, I saw Pastor Shaw interviewing a possible new admission, a girl whose arms were tattooed with snakes.

  My next call was to Mona Archibald, the protective service worker at HRS assigned to Lydia’s case. Mona said she had visited the Tabernacle Home once, knew it was religious oriented, and was satisfied with the facility. “Pastor Shaw estimated the cost of keeping a girl there at around a thousand a month.”

  “Is it true HRS pays nothing?”

  “Yes, it is supported entirely by private donations.”

  “Do her parents contribute?”

  “No, they can’t afford to. Last year they had Lydia admitted to Valley View Hospital, a private mental health facility. Her hospitalization cost more than seventy thousand dollars, but when she stayed longer than the insurance allowed, her parents became responsible, and now they owe almost twenty thousand dollars. And that was before she got in trouble by putting the baby in the microwave oven.”

  “She never put a baby in a microwave.” I explained what I had been told.

  “That’s what the paperwork says,” Mona replied.

  “I know, but the sister is a ten-year-old. Why didn’t anyone question how she fit in a microwave?”

  “Do you know about the knife or being tied to a fence?” This stopped me. “Then I suggest you read my file,” Mona said.

  “Okay, I will, but even so, don’t her parents have a legal obligation to care for her?” I questioned. “I can’t call up the state or a religious group and say that I am tired of supporting my teenagers because they are bratty or defiant or won’t do their chores, or even because I already owe too much money for their bills.”

  “If Lydia had been placed by the court in HRS foster care, we could take legal action to force her parents to pay for her upkeep, but since she is in a private facility, we can’t do that. Besides, this placement is saving the state a considerable amount of money.”

  “Do you know why Lydia was treated at Valley View?”

  “Depression and drugs.”

  “Was this before or after her boyfriend disappeared?”

  “Before,” Mona replied. “Who told you about Teddy?”

  “Lydia.”

  “Teddy and his crowd were into satanic rituals, which probably has something to do with the kid’s murder. Fortunately, the people at the Tabernacle Home know how to deal with the results of those evil influences.”

  Since I hardly knew Mona, I tried to skirt the struggle between Satan and God that characterized the belief systems of many churches in the district. “I am mainly concerned that they aren’t giving Lydia an education. If she were in foster care or at home, she could attend school.”

  “She dropped out of school before she went to the Tabernacle Home.”

  “Why can’t she be reconciled with her family?”

  “They are afraid she might harm the younger children again.”

  “But she never harmed anyone!” I protested.

  “Well, you had better talk to Mrs. Ryan about that,” Mona replied.

  “I’m still uncomfortable with Lydia’s lack of freedom at the Tabernacle Home as well as their secretiveness, which is preventing me from having a confidential relationship with her.”

  “The important factor is that she is safe and not able to cause any trouble.”

  “And not costing the state any money.”

  “We can’t take over the care of every confused child who doesn’t get along with her parents,” Mona retorted, then said she had to take a call on the other line.

  In order to investigate the Tabernacle Home, I turned to friends, the Brandons, a physician and his wife who are devout Christians. Darlene Brandon, who had been a teacher in several Christian academies, said she had met the Shaws but was reluctant to say anything about them until I explained they were in charge of a child for whom I bore a responsibility.

  “I wouldn’t allow either of them to walk my baby across the street,” Darlene snapped. “You had better ask Harvey about them.”

  That evening Harvey Brandon began the discussion of the Tabernacle Home by mentioning their precarious financial situation. “They travel from church to church seeking donations and are always behind in their payments,” he said.

  “Would you trust them with disturbed young women?”

  “I do have some concerns about their approach,” Harvey began judiciously, then related a story about Pastor John Shaw. “I had a patient who was experiencing cardiac pains, but I never could find anything wrong with his heart. Then he told me that Pastor Shaw warned him that the Lord was going to punish him with a heart attack if he didn’t shape up, thus creating psychosomatic symptoms. The next time I saw Shaw I asked him about it. He admitted saying it but did not feel he had done anything wrong by passing on God’s ‘message.’ “

  The next day I drove to the HRS office to acquire a complete copy of Lydia’s file, something every Guardian ad Litem is entitled to have. The copy machine was outside the office of the department’s attorney, Calvin Reynolds, and he stepped out to ask what case I was working on.

  “Lydia Ryan,” I responded without looking up from the pile of papers I was sorting.

  “Oh, the microwave oven case,” he said with a grunt to indicate his distaste.

  I spun around. “She never put anyone in any microwave oven!”

  “Then why was she in the juvenile detention center?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me! How can they put a kid in JDC for something she did not do, then when she has served time for no reason, place her in another kind of religious jail?”

  Calvin, who was accustomed to the indignation of self-righteous guardians, tilted his head indulgently. “Have you been to the Tabernacle Home?”

  “I was there yesterday.”

  Something in his expression made me realize he might not be as sold on the place as Mona. “From what the caseworker says it sounds almost too good to be true, but we could use some alternatives to foster care or group homes. In fact, we have three other teenage girls who might do well there. What’s it like?”

  “I have a few concerns …” I began cautiously. “For instance, the children’s movements are restricted and they do not attend school.”

  “Come into my office for a moment,” Calvin said softly. “I want to tell you about something that worried me.”

  After Calvin closed the door,
he explained that before going to the Tabernacle Home, Lydia had run away from the HRS shelter to Jason’s—that’s her new boyfriend—house. Jason’s mother suggested the Tabernacle Home, which was only a few miles away from where they lived. Lydia agreed to try it because she knew that if she got caught, she would be sent back to juvenile detention. After a few days, the Tabernacle Home persuaded Lydia’s parents to sign the admission papers, but because she was technically a runaway from an HRS shelter, she had to appear in juvenile court.

  “When Tabernacle Home received the subpoena for Lydia to appear for her hearing, Pastor Shaw telephoned me and said he was concerned that Lydia might run away again,” Calvin explained. “He then asked my permission to restrain Lydia so he could guarantee her court appearance. I asked how they would do that, and he said, ‘in handcuffs and shackles.’ “

  “What!” I exclaimed. “Are you serious?”

  Calvin shook his head somberly. “Of course I told him absolutely not, but later I wondered how they would have acquired that sort of equipment.”

  “Now I can see why they don’t want me to speak with her alone,” I muttered.

  Since my first phone call I had felt ill at ease with the Tabernacle Home, and nothing I had heard since had modified that sentiment. Now my antennae were fully extended. This girl needed my protection and nobody was going to deny it, even if I had to see the judge.

  Since it was difficult for me to understand the strong religious underpinnings of the situation, I asked my husband, Phil, who had been brought up as a Christian and attended a fundamentalist university, for his perspective.

  “First, don’t jump to conclusions,” Phil warned. “Even though they are restrictive, they might be offering her something she really needs: an accepting family. Also, by the simple act of being saved, she could be relieved of vast stores of guilt for past misdeeds.”

  “I still can’t shake the sense that there is something wrong.” I told him about some of the Tabernacle Home’s rules.

  “You say she has been saved?”

  “Yes, and she is happy there, or claims she is.”

  “The control doesn’t make sense from a spiritual point of view. The moment she accepted Jesus she was saved from transgression.” He was thoughtful for a moment, then replied, “I’d be worried there might be something less savory going on there.”