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

by Gay Courter

  The room seemed to be pressing tighter. Rudolph Grover’s sour breath was directed at me. “It’s not just the kid, it’s his whole damn family,” he continued in a disgusted tone. “The Kings have no morals. That’s why they sponsored the abortion.” His eyes swiveled from me to Lillian. “I see she didn’t tell you about that either. What a surprise! You’re nice ladies; you mean well. You think you are doing a fine job of rescuing poor, abused children, and maybe part of the time you do, but sometimes you make mistakes. Sometimes you miss the essential facts because you are blinded by your desire to do good. You don’t mean anyone any harm, but the victim in this case isn’t some poor little girl. The victim is right here in this room spilling out his guts to you.”

  “Sandra had an abortion?” I asked.

  “Figure it out for yourself. Dirk was home for Thanksgiving, then again in December. Probably knocked her up on Turkey Day and come Christmas they figured out that Santa had another surprise bundle for them. Without a word to her mother or me, the Kings took her to a clinic near the university, but because Sandra was underage she needed a parent to sign. I have copies of the release forms signed by Mrs. King, only she fraudulently signed herself ‘Florence Shepherd’. If we have to go to a trial, my lawyer says he’ll use them.”

  Another prisoner wearing orange peered in the open doorway and scowled. “There are no secrets here. They think I’m a child molester, which is the lowest of the low. When I get to the state prison, my life will be hell, but at least it won’t last longer than six months.”

  “What’s your deal with the prosecutor?” Lillian asked.

  “That if I turned myself in they’d drop Florence’s charges and send me to a prison hospital.”

  The guard came by and tapped the door. “The lunches are going out upstairs, Grover.”

  As Mr. Grover stood, he grimaced in pain.

  “I’m only here because I love them both and always will even if I will never understand why Sandra did this to me.” Rudolph Grover bowed his head and followed the guard to the staircase.

  Halfway down the jailhouse steps I stopped and turned to Lillian. “What do you think?”

  “Do you know how many molesters and rapists use the impotency excuse? The minute they’re caught their privates shrivel up.”

  “The whole abortion thing doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I mean she could have been pregnant, but he could have been the father too.”

  “That man tried his hardest to mess with our minds,” Lillian drawled. “As I listened, I tried to watch for a pattern of behavior. Whenever you would come on strong, he put you on the defensive.”

  “That guy is one master manipulator. He sure has my mind swirling.”

  “If he was messing with us, just think what he could do to that young girl and her mother” Lillian said as she slipped into the seat of her convertible and turned the key.

  My phone had a message that Florence Shepherd wanted to see me and it was easier for me to go there directly than back to my office first.

  When I knocked on the door, I heard a faint voice calling, so I opened the door a crack and announced who I was. Florence Shepherd told me to come in. I found her lying on the couch propped by pillows.

  “I wanted your opinion on a matter.” I nodded for her to continue. “Next weekend the various service corps at Sawgrass High are having a military ball. Dirk is coming from Virginia. Sandra wants to stay at the Kings’ overnight. I said it wouldn’t look right, but I would ask you.”

  “Considering that she is the complainant in a sexual abuse case, I think that wouldn’t be wise.”

  “Would you tell her that for me?” Florence said as her daughter arrived home carrying several sacks of groceries.

  I offered to help carry in the rest of the packages. Once outside, I spoke quickly and told Sandra what her mother had I were discussing. I suggested that she not hassle her mother about sleeping at the Kings’ until the legal case was over.

  “I get it. It’s no big deal, really.”

  I took a long breath. “I saw Mr. Grover in jail today and he made some worrisome claims.”

  “What did he say this time?” I told her the abortion allegations. “Not true! Not a word of it.” Her face flushed. “I’ve never been pregnant. I did have a heavy period in January, which grossed him out, so he left me alone for a few nights. Otherwise—” She trembled with anger. “Otherwise he would have been all over me.” She slumped against the car. “I don’t believe in abortion and I never would get rid of Dirk’s baby!”

  Or Mr. Grover’s I thought to myself. “It’s just that I didn’t want you to look foolish if it came up in court or during a deposition.”

  “I should have kept my mouth shut. It isn’t worth it.” Sandra covered her face with her hands and groaned, “It’s never going to be over. Never.”

  Rudolph Grover was set for arraignment the following week. This is the hearing attended by the prosecutor, the defendant, and the defense attorney in which the defendant hears the formal charges against him for the first time and enters a plea to these charges. I had another commitment, but as soon as court was over Lillian called me.

  “He didn’t plead ‘guilty’ after all. No defense attorney permits a guilty plea at the arraignment,” she said. “He still can change his plea or file a motion at the pre-trial conference.”

  A few days later I received a copy of the motion for reduction of bail. The reasons stated were that the defendant had no prior arrests, that he was 62 years old, and had numerous chronic medical problems requiring constant medical supervision, including diabetes, diverticulitis, and arteriosclerosis. It concluded that the defendant had been an undergraduate at Notre Dame with a master’s degree from Yale.

  What did a university have to do with preventing criminal behavior? Once again edges of facts and different versions blurred. My mind floated back to good old Humbert Humbert, the tutor, the charmer, the seducer, the pervert, the obsessed, the debaucher, the raconteur, the poseur, the braggart, the storyteller. I would never what happened in the dark of a bedroom, but I could check facts. I called the Yale Alumni Association.

  “What year did he graduate?” asked the Yale archivist.

  “I’m not sure. “

  “There’s one Rudolph Grover with a California address, but he was an undergraduate in the 1970s.”

  “That’s not it. Would you have the name if he did not receive a degree?”

  “We have a file on every person who attended the university for six weeks or longer.”

  “So there is no other Rudolph Grover?”

  “No, I’m sorry, but this happens all the time.”

  “I always believed you, but now I have proof Mr. Grover lied about at least one thing,” I told Sandra the next time I saw her.

  “You actually called Yale and checked?” she said with glee.

  “I wish everything was that easy,” I replied. “I do have some tough news. You have to give a deposition a week from Friday. I asked them to schedule it after school so you wouldn’t miss classes.”

  “That’s the day of the district tennis tournament!” she howled. “Can the date be changed?”

  “Can’t hurt to ask,” I said though I knew it was tough to reschedule all the court personnel and lawyers.

  I called Lillian. “Lillian, you can work miracles, can’t you?”

  “Wait, let me check me wings. What’s up?”

  “On a scale from likely to impossible how difficult is it to change the date of a deposition?”

  “Closer to impossible, why?”

  I explained about Sandra’s tennis tournament. “It’s for the district championship and she’s the second ranked player on the team. Without her, they won’t have a chance.”

  “These guys aren’t sympathetic to much, but a sports championship? Now that’s something they understand.”

  An hour later she called me back. “Done. We’ve pushed the deposition back three weeks until after spring break.”

&nb
sp; I called Sandra at once. “Do you mean it? I can go to the tournament?” I assured her that was so. “I am so glad you are my guardian,” she said. “Thanks for everything!”

  The lilt in her voice echoed in my mind for a long time afterward. There was so much I couldn’t change, so little I could accomplish. Everyone asked me how I could tolerate the creeps and maniacs who hurt kids or how I could handle the pain of abused children. They wondered if I wasn’t eternally frustrated by the system and why I would subject myself to so many impossible or disappointing outcomes. My response was to say that very often I could make a phone call and fix something, if only for an hour or a day. And if I didn’t make that call, nobody else would. Here was the perfect example. It had been a very small issue. One child did not want the court’s calendar to prevent her from playing a tennis game. A petty matter, surely not something that anyone else would care about. But Sandra cared. Her team cared. It was in her best interests to attend the game. You don’t have to change the world to make a difference. Sometimes all you have to do is make one phone call.

  A status conference was scheduled for the following week. I asked whether or not I should attend, but was told it was procedural. If Mr. Grover’s bail was lowered or he was released, I would be informed. Just to be certain, I left a message with the prosecutor about the Yale lie. That afternoon I phoned the assistant state attorney to find out what happened. The secretary, who usually informed me of routine events, was evasive. “Let me put you through to Mr. Yost.”

  “Good news,” Will Yost said in a fast, clipped voice. “Rudolph Grover pled nolo contendre, was adjudicated guilty, and was sentenced to seven years under the Department of Corrections, with three years probation, plus we got a restitution hearing, and of course no further contact with the victim.”

  “You mean he’s going to be locked up for seven years?”

  “He’ll get out in three or four, but yes, he’ll be transferred tomorrow to the state prison.”

  “So it’s over. No depositions, no trial … “ I rambled as I digested the news.

  “That’s right … “

  “Why did he change his plea?”

  “You should have heard the guy. He sounded like that character in A Tale of Two Cities.”

  “You mean ‘It is a far better thing that I do than I have ever done before.’ “

  “Exactly. He played it like a noble gesture to spare his loved ones, even though he was innocent.”

  “Do you think he is?”

  “Hell no. Most of the guilty ones plead innocent and it’s the ones who feel the noose around their necks who plead out to cut their losses.”

  “Did you call Sandra?”

  “No, I thought you might want to do that.”

  “I will. And thank you, Mr. Yost, for Sandra’s sake, thank you very much.”

  I dialed the phone. “Sandra?” I said when I recognized her voice. “It’s over. Mr. Grover is going to prison for seven years.” I explained what the plea meant.

  “That means everyone will believe me.”

  “Yes, Sandra. People who aren’t guilty don’t volunteer to go to jail.”

  “I can’t wait to tell Dirk.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Are you still my guardian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Could you call my HRS worker?”

  “Sure. That’s what I am here for,” I said with a satisfied chuckle, “to make phone calls for you.”

  After I was discharged from the case, I still kept in touch with Sandra. Once when I dropped by the fast food restaurant where she worked, she wriggled her fingers so I couldn’t miss an engagement ring. “Dirk and I are going to be married this time next year.”

  “What about your college plans?”

  “I’m combining that with my military training.”

  Six months later I had a curious call from a Mr. Hernandez of the prison probation department. “Do you know anything about Mr. Grover’s plans to live in Daytona Beach with Florence Shepherd when he gets out of jail?”

  “No,” I replied, somewhat surprised that he was still alive. “How is his health? He was very ill when he was sentenced.”

  “Nothing in my reports indicates a particular medical problem other than a mild heart condition and high blood pressure.”

  “How soon could he get out?” I asked.

  “Can’t say. I’m just doing the paperwork.”

  On Sandra’s 18th birthday I telephoned her. Florence Shepherd said that her daughter had moved out that afternoon. “She’s getting married in three weeks but she couldn’t wait another minute to leave me.”

  Balloons and streamers decorated the yard surrounding the Kings’ mobile home. A wooden arbor was decked with silk flowers. Coolers of ice were filled with sodas and beer. The sun was blazing as Dirk strolled around in full military dress, his face getting redder by the minute as the hour set for the wedding passed. At last a car pulled up. Florence and her sister Constance arrived. It was clear that they were guests, rather than the hosts for this affair. A friend of the family sang a song and everyone, drinks in hand, encircled the arbor.

  Sandra descended from the trailer wearing an elaborate confection of tulle and lace with a train that filled in the distance from the porch to the alter. Her hair was pulled back except for Venus-rising-from-the-sea tendrils framing her face. A preacher performed the blessedly short ceremony.

  While the food was being laid out on tables in the trailer, the wedding party, and even some of the guests disappeared to change into cut-off jeans and T-shirts. One bridesmaid put on a bathing suit, another skintight shorts and a halter.

  Sandra came out of the bedroom in a butter-colored suit and matching bow in her hair. She waved for me to come back into her room and we sat on her bed. “You never said anything but you don’t think I should have gotten married, do you?”

  “You’re young, but you’ve been through a lot.”

  Sandra gave me a hug. “Sometimes its like a war between Millie and my mother. Now they will have to give me some peace.” She seemed to be waiting for my approval. ‘I’m enlisting next month.”

  “Part of the plan,” I said.

  Sandra twisted her brand new wedding band. “Yes, and so far it’s working out the way I wanted.”

  7

  All Victories Great and Small

  The Rights of Children

  I beseech you to treasure up in your heart these my parting words: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity

  —HORACE MANN

  WHEN I BECAME A GUARDIAN AD LITEM I WAS LOOKING TO help individual children. As soon as I became actively involved in their lives, I began to receive a practical course in the social and economic issues that helped create the acute problems many children face and how little is being done to remedy the root causes of abuse and neglect as well as the dearth of programs to assist families in crisis. The fact that the Stevensons were not kept in the same foster home or that the social workers gave no consideration to continuity of schools in placing them astonished me at first. When I learned that this was routine management, I no longer could content myself with merely putting out the fires as they threatened to engulf the children in my charge. I had to begin to address how citizens could take the lead in local action in the areas of prevention and recovery. Like many advocates, I felt I had to pass on what I discovered to the much wider community. The outrage all the guardians feel during our personal encounters with the cruelty and injustice our children have suffered spills over to a much wider base of friends and families, all of whom vote for legislators and judges. Because we feel viscerally connected to the families in the system, we are less likely to accept platitudes from bureaucrats. We bristle when children are referred to as “files,” homes as “beds,” families as “placements.” We refuse to accept shoddy work, lazy excuses, convoluted paperwork, unconscionable delays, and idiotic rules or fragmented authority when they impact negatively on an
y child’s life—especially one assigned to our supervision.

  The children entrusted to me were not particularly difficult or unusual cases. I received whatever the office had to have covered at a time I was willing to accept a new case, although once I had some success with teenagers, I was given more of them. There are family problems even more convoluted and acute than the ones I handled, there are court cases with uglier perpetrators, there are children with more tragic lives. In a sense, I have had a random sample of what happens in social service agencies and courtrooms throughout the country on a daily basis.

  Nationally, one-third of all children in foster care are between thirteen and eighteen and about one-half are over the age of ten. Many guardians, especially the older ones, feel more comfortable with younger children, who are not as expressive about how they feel or have as many ideas about where they want to live. Yet the severe problems of older children do not suddenly erupt with their hormones. Years of unreported abuse and neglect take their toll and foster care does not begin to solve their problems. At least half of all runaways (an estimated 500,000 teenagers) in the United States have fled from state-supported foster homes or correctional institutions. Lydia Ryan and Alicia Stevenson preferred to live on the street rather than return to the “system.” No matter how hard I tried, I could not secure the individualized mental or medical health or educational programs they required. Their injuries did not stop when they were removed from their parents’ homes but were compounded by the ineffectual way the state managed their care, and they were irrevocably harmed when they were dumped without any resources the day they came of age. Nobody would listen to what they wanted when they were under eighteen. Nobody would help them when they were over eighteen. In the end I also failed to provide either of them with a permanent, loving family. What would have to change to improve the outcome for troubled children in the future?

  A CHILD’S RIGHT TO A PERMANENT, SAFE, CARING HOME MUST BE ESTABLISHED LEGALLY

  As societies evolve, the first rights are given to men, then animals, followed by minorities, women, and finally children. In twentieth century America, the first wave of rights reform went to minorities while the second wave established parity between men and women. There seems to be about a ten-year span between the early work to establish these rights, national legislation to guarantee them, and court cases to interpret and insure them. Now comes the third wave: the rights of the most tender citizens. We are in the early stages of establishing that children should have guaranteed constitutional rights.