Accused

by Brittany Ducker

  Our foster care system is in a sad state, with over half a million children living in foster homes and not enough workers and foster parents to adequately supervise and protect them all.14 The system continues to deteriorate even with the dedication of many people. As more children enter the system, there are just not enough resources to adequately care for them. Individual caseworkers are oftentimes carrying a load three times higher than is appropriate and even the most well-intentioned cannot possibly devote an adequate amount of attention to all the children the states charge them with supervising. The three determining factors in the system’s failure are “an upsurge in the number of children in need of care; an overburdened system and agencies; an inadequate number of foster parents.”15

  The system needs help but budgetary constraints impede progress. When lack of funding is coupled with overworked and underpaid staff, eventually the situation will implode and the children are the ones who suffer. The system needs improvement but, “For child protective agencies to improve, they must be valued as more than a wasteland of children of the underclass.”16 Our society as a whole has to take responsibility for these children.

  It is a systemic problem that needs nationwide cooperation in order to fix it. Unfortunately, “caseworkers have become easy targets for venting frustrations and often recognize the indefensible position in which their agencies have placed them.”17 The issues many families involved in the system experience are complex and difficult. They require the caseworker to work closely with the family for long periods of time. Many are unable to do this due to their burden of high caseloads.18

  In order to change the system, the professionals charged with protecting it must step up. CPS workers and foster children are “caught in a chaotic system that has been abandoned by the professionals who are equipped to fix it.”19 The professionals involved must dedicate themselves to repairing the system’s inadequacies. In order to make a change, it is important that the public is aware of the problem at hand. Children’s advocates like the attorneys involved in the dependency, neglect and abuse system must raise public awareness of the plights of these children. This can occur by lobbying for more financial support, better training and education.20

  The youngsters involved in the system are not throw-away kids. Sometimes, all it takes is for one person to take an interest in a child and when something doesn’t feel right to say something. How can the system protect these children if it is fundamentally ill-equipped? There is no overnight or quick fix for the problem. However, we can begin by focusing on the instances in which the system broke down and did not work in the hopes that it inspires more people to action.

  That is the reason why it is important to examine situations like the one surrounding Joshua Young and Trey Zwicker. Although CPS had involvement in the home, it remained unaware that Joshua was not living at the location reported by his father. There was rampant domestic violence in the house that was ongoing during CPS’s involvement with Gouker. It appears that no one saw the signs or, if they did, nothing was done about it. Could a lower caseload or more resources have prevented Gouker’s violence? It is impossible to know for sure but, now that the public is aware of the situation, we as a community must work toward preventing such tragedies from happening in the future.

  Reform is the solution to “overworked, undertrained, underpaid and often underappreciated” social workers.21 Advocacy groups like the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) are working to change public policy on everything from child abuse to foster care, child placement and family preservation. Groups like CASA—Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children—have programs all over the country ready to fulfill the group’s mission statement: “The mission of the National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Association, together with its state and local members, is to support and promote court-appointed volunteer advocacy so that every abused and neglected child can be safe, establish permanence and have the opportunity to thrive.”22

  If the public is educated, if groups like NCCPR and CASA keep up their advocacy efforts, if the social workers are better trained and better supported, then perhaps failures like the case of Amy Dye, the four malnourished boys in New Jersey, the dead infants in Vermont—and especially the case of Joshua Young—may never have to be reported again.

  Epilogue

  Once the jurors had returned their verdict, Josh Young returned to the Walshes’ home that night. Stepping outside of the walls of the detention center and the courthouse for the first time in two years was exciting but overwhelming at the same time.

  Little Josh did his best to settle back into the household with his beloved little sister, where he planned to live as he completed his senior year of high school. His younger sister was the person he loved most in the world and he was ecstatic that he would be able to spend time with her outside the confines of the detention center. Waking up under the same roof as his sister made him very happy.

  The Walshes were supportive of Josh and helped him every way they could in the days following his trial and release from custody. At that point, Josh Young spoke to the media for the first time since detectives initially charged him in Trey’s death. When he was five months shy of his eighteenth birthday, he sat down with a reporter from The Courier Journal, Louisville’s largest newspaper, in Pete Schuler’s office. Josh expressed hope that he could live a normal life and escape memories of the trial that he feared would follow him forever. A jury acquitted him, but he knew some people would always doubt his innocence no matter how he tried to prove them wrong. He expressed sadness about Trey’s death and disclosed that he felt Josh Gouker was crazy and that, at that time, he had no desire for further contact with the man.1 He was nervous about the future but assured the reporter that he would do his best to succeed in life. Little Josh appeared happy in the Walsh household and it appeared that it could become a permanent home for the young man.

  The Walshes expressed interest in adopting Josh, as they had his younger sister. It seemed as though the torn pieces of his life were coming together now and he would finally have a permanent family unit. It should have been a happy ending.

  The two years that he spent incarcerated took their toll on Little Josh. After those years of living in a completely regimented and controlled environment where strict rules and regulations dictated every action he took, the freedom of being a normal teenager was overwhelming to him. Like many teenagers, he fought against authority and wanted to be free to spend all of his time with his friends.

  One Friday afternoon, he failed to return from school and his foster family did not know where he was. Joshua spent the next several days roaming the city with friends and speaking with the media via Facebook chat. He was intent on being with kids his own age, perhaps due to such a long period of time incarcerated without the ability to make his own choices.

  Eventually, authorities located Josh and police alleged that he fled when they attempted to apprehend him. He was charged in juvenile court with fleeing and evading the police. Josh was placed in a group home where he remained until Christmas of 2013. Within weeks of that date, he turned eighteen. His attorneys filed a motion to expunge his criminal record in the hopes of wiping their client’s slate clean. In Kentucky, a motion to expunge a person’s record can be filed sixty days after a dismissal. If a judge expunges a case, it no longer appears on that individual’s criminal history. After pondering the motion to expunge for over a month, Judge Barry Willett denied Josh’s motion, meaning that the murder charge continues to appear on any records check regarding Josh, despite the fact that he was acquitted by a jury. It was a huge blow to Josh, as inquiries by schools and potential employers revealed the fact that he had been previously charged with serious offenses.

  Little Josh remained notorious in Louisville and was recognized nearly everywhere he went after the trial. It was impossible for him to obtain employment, as a routine background check immediately showed charges that understandably made any potential employe
r worry. In the months after his eighteenth birthday, he turned to his twenty-nine-year-old cousin for help and support. It was difficult for Joshua to trust new people. During his entire life, there were few people that he could truly count on to help him. Most of the adults in his life had betrayed him in some way. He was comfortable with his cousin, because he’d lived in his household during his mother’s prison stint. Unfortunately, his cousin, now an adult, did not have a regular place to stay, so the two lived in hotel rooms on his cousin’s savings, which rapidly depleted.

  During their stay at a modest motel in the Louisville area, Josh was confronted at least twice by police. During one such occasion, a police officer held a gun to the boy’s head. It seemed that the authorities were still wary of Little Josh and believed he might be up to no good. However, after each encounter, the officers determined that Little Josh had done nothing wrong. He just wanted to be left alone and that was increasingly difficult to achieve while living in Louisville.

  There were people who would help him, but Josh desperately wanted to make it on his own. In September of 2013, approximately one month after his release from custody, Josh reconnected with a young lady he’d known since childhood at a cookout at his uncle’s home. They made a cute couple. A pretty and bubbly blonde, she became a big part of Josh’s life who worried about him constantly and cared about him. She was a student at a nearby community college and worked at a daycare center, caring for children. She encouraged Josh to go to college and he planned to enroll the following fall after obtaining his general equivalency diploma.

  As Josh attempted to rebuild his life, his father was serving a life sentence for Trey’s murder. He is currently imprisoned at Kentucky State Penitentiary, or “KSP” as the inmates call it. KSP is Kentucky’s maximum security prison where the “worst of the worst” are typically housed. This site is also home to Kentucky’s death row inmates.

  Prior to Trey’s murder, Gouker had spent the majority of his adult life behind bars, so he must have become accustomed to prison life. Gouker soon filed a motion to set aside his guilty plea due to ineffective assistance of counsel. He alleged in that motion that his attorneys were ineffective in allowing him to plead guilty to Trey’s murder and the host of other charges that he faced in connection with Trey’s death and the house of horrors where Gouker terrorized his wife and her family. He stated that he was unfairly influenced by the fact that his son was facing life in prison as his co-defendant and that his attorneys should not have allowed him to enter the open plea in Trey’s murder.

  I believe that Gouker would like the world to think that his guilty plea was an act of protection for his son and that the only reason he confessed to Trey’s murder was to keep Little Josh from going to prison for the rest of his life. However, he thrives on attention and his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel seems yet another way to thrust himself back into the media spotlight. Gouker has nothing but time and filed the motion when the media announced that his son was set to speak out about his experience on a national stage.

  Shortly after the acquittal, the popular Dr. Phil show got in touch with Josh’s foster mother, stating that they wanted to offer help to the young man. When Josh turned eighteen in January 2014, his cousin contacted the show on his behalf. The company offered to fly him, his cousin and his girlfriend to Los Angeles, California to film a two-part segment of a show that would be titled, “My Father Tried to Frame Me for Murder.” At the time, Joshua had barely reached the age of majority; he was still a kid. However, the trip must have sounded good to a boy who had nothing—no place to live, no real “home” and no stability. His cousin could accompany him on the trip and would appear on the show as well, and Josh felt safe with his cousin. He felt the experience would give him the opportunity to tell his side of the story and express his feelings of sorrow at Trey’s death. The producers and their assistant appeared to truly want to help him. At that point, Joshua had not publicly addressed the allegations against him and had not offered his version of the events on the night of Trey’s murder. He hoped that now he could clear the air and show the world that he was not involved in Trey’s death.

  I remember where I was when I heard the first news account that the body of a teenager was found at Liberty High School. My own child was the same age and it frightened me to the core. I think all parents watching the news that night clutched their children a little closer. I became captivated by the story and haunted by it as well, especially after police revealed that family members were suspected in the crime. As I watched the trial unfold, I repeatedly shook my head as additional facts came to light.

  I was a teenage parent like the parents of both boys involved in this horrible tragedy. It was frightening that something like this could happen so close to home. The more I delved into the backstory, the more convinced I became that this tragedy warranted an examination of how Joshua Gouker came to be what he is and how children are often lost in the child protective system. Having worked as a guardian ad litem in family court, I am all too familiar with how often the person most dangerous to a child is under his own roof.

  I attempted to speak with Terry Zwicker in connection with this book but I could not obtain his cooperation. Therefore, I attempted to draw my information regarding Trey respectfully from trial testimony, public records, Mr. Zwicker’s interviews with police and his comments to the media. I am sensitive to the fact that this tragedy altered his life immeasurably in a traumatic and ongoing way. My hope with this book was to bring light to a broken system and prompt positive change in that system. In doing so, I believe we, as a community, can endeavor to ensure that tragedies like this one do not reoccur. I wish the best for all the parties negatively impacted by Joshua Gouker’s evil actions and I hope they find some measure of peace.

  In researching this book, I read every account I could find, watched hours of trial testimony, pored over thousands of documents and viewed numerous media accounts. Finally, I attempted to reach out to many of the parties involved in the case. When I contacted Joshua Young, he agreed to meet with me to discuss his case.

  When I first met Josh, I felt he was a very sweet kid. He was cautious and wary of people, a quality that is to be expected of someone who has endured the traumas in life that he has. Having had a difficult life myself, being a young mother who tried to take good care of her child and get an education, I developed an almost immediate and overwhelming feeling of empathy for him. I wanted to ensure that he was not exploited.

  Before I reached out to Josh, I had heard in media reports that he was an honor student and a high school wrestler prior to his father regaining custody of him in the Spring of 2011. I knew that he had lost his mother and had a past spent in various foster homes. Having experienced firsthand how difficult being the child of a teen mother can be, I wanted to know how this kid ended up embroiled in such a horrendous act.

  I first met Joshua Young in person when he visited my office in early 2014. Little Josh had just turned eighteen. He arrived with his cousin and his girlfriend. I was very happy for the opportunity to hear about his ordeal from his point of view. He wanted to speak out about his experience and give his side of the story.

  What struck me immediately was that although he was eighteen years old, a legal adult, Josh was just a kid. He was very quiet and polite as he answered my initial questions. We only spoke briefly during that first meeting but when he left I felt suddenly overcome with emotion. He was an adolescent with no parent to help him navigate life.

  Josh and his girlfriend indicated to me that they were both in the process of applying for college. Because of my past and the fact that my son is the same age as Joshua, this struck me and stuck with me. I am aware there are questions that must be asked of each college and there are certain things that must be handled. A parent helps the child complete the application, accompanies the child on campus visits and helps to select the college.

  Josh did not have that support. He was essentially alone in the world and I rec
ognized how difficult that could be. Because he was in the custody of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services when he turned eighteen, Josh can attend any public college in the state of Kentucky tuition-free, which he said had helped immensely in mapping out his future.

  However, even as time passed and he tried to move forward, there continued to be encounters that reminded Joshua of the trial and people’s suspicions, especially in Louisville. On more than one occasion, Joshua related that he walked into a public place and all eyes were on him. He recalled a situation when a lady passed him twice in a restaurant, then turned around and walked up to the table. Regarding Josh with a puzzled look, she said, “I know you from somewhere. I just can’t place it,” and she continued to stand at the table, unmoving. What could he possibly say in that situation: “You might recognize me from the trial where I was acquitted of my stepbrother’s murder”? There was no appropriate way to answer her.

  Every time Josh leaves home, he receives near-constant stares and some people are even bold enough to approach him. I think he hoped to curb this attention with his appearance on the Dr. Phil Show. He seemed to believe that if he sat down and finally told his version of events that people would no longer believe he was involved in Trey’s murder.

  Josh did not realize that, after he had agreed to appear on the show, Dr. Phil producers also had contacted Trey’s father and stepmother and invited them on the show. They also invited Cassi to appear on the program to tell her side of the story.

  The episode of Dr. Phil featuring Joshua Young appeared in two parts on February 24 and 25, 2014, only a few weeks after it was taped. Josh appeared articulate and straightforward on the broadcast, adamant that he had no involvement whatsoever in Trey’s death. When asked about his dad, he expressed that he did not understand how a person could be born, go through life and end up like his biological father, Joshua Gouker. He stated that based on his father’s actions in the previous years, he knew that Gouker did not love him as a father should and that he did not expect Gouker to love anyone. Josh expressed a deep fear of the man and told the audience that he was scared of what his father could do. He believed that Gouker was capable of anything.2