Come Back With a Bonus Excerpt: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back

by Claire Fontaine

  The police showed up yesterday unannounced and hauled in the kids who had been in OP, offered them coffee, cigarettes, and plane tickets home, then interviewed and strip-searched them for signs of abuse. None was found but eight of them said they were abused (handcuffed, tied up, forced to defecate on the floor, given limited food and water). Three of these kids asked for tickets home; the other five wanted to return to Morava. The police took the eight kids to spend the night in what they said was an “orphanage.”

  They brought the remaining fifty kids in, made the same offers, and started strip-searching them until the American Embassy made them stop. Police refused to interview any of them because they wouldn’t corroborate any abuse and accused the eight of lying. One group of boys was so upset at not being able to speak that they broke and threw things in the station until police finally interviewed several to pacify them. When their case manager, Dusana, pointed out that police deliberately mistranslated the kids’ words, she was threatened with arrest and forbidden any further contact with students.

  On the way, we’re to meet the detective in charge of the investigation, Karel, at a McDonald’s to pick up the kids who spent the night in the orphanage. As we reach the tiny golden arches attached to an ancient building, he calls to tell us that the kids went to Morava this morning. He apparently found it amusing to send us on a wild-goose chase to the quintessential symbol of American capitalism. This is prophetic.

  “Mothers! Oh, mother hug!” hits us the second we walk in Morava’s doors as fifty weepy, hyper boys and girls surround us. A few staff who speak no English move about, but the kids seem in charge of themselves. The teens range from fourteen to nearly eighteen, but in their distress they seem like small children. Some cling and cry, others are tense and withdrawn, all are angry, saying some version of, “They listened to a few kids say they were abused instead of fifty other kids who said they were lying!”

  Mia isn’t in the group, so a boy starts down the girls’ hallway to get her. A tall young man chastises him, “That’s a Cat 3, Off Area.” He’s obviously a senior boy, but the student doing the most to comfort everyone is a diminutive boy with huge dark eyes, who rotates holding and reassuring whoever’s crying. He pulls on my sleeve.

  Charles speaks slowly, sometimes struggling for words. “They tried to arrest Dusana she couldn’t stop crying I had to hold her I was her only support Miss Fontaine!”

  He blinks back tears, then turns to comfort a kid a foot taller than he is. A chubby Husky puppy charges out of a hallway. Gizmo! The kids race around after him. Barking, crying, hugging, reporting, it’s pandemonium.

  “Mommy!”

  I turn and my little monkey runs into my arms. She had no idea I was coming.

  “I can’t believe you’re here! I love you! Are you going to help Glenn and Steve?”

  I have a million questions, but I’m content just to hold her and listen to her voice. Her eyes sparkle again!

  I recognize her voice first, but it’s when I see the mass of hair that I gasp. My mom’s here! She turns at my voice, her eyes light up, and she has just enough warning to brace herself as I practically bowl her over in my excitement.

  Her smell! When I bury my face in her sweater, it’s the familiar mix of baby powder and Fracas that makes me tear up.

  “Mommy, I missed you so much!” I whisper. I close my eyes so my senses can take everything in and I temporarily forget that, considering the state of things, parents showing up can’t be good. Does this mean I’m going home?

  “He promised to punish Morava for firing him,” Peter says, shaking his head.

  We’ve regrouped in the main office where Peter, the Czech head of staff for the boys, sits amid ringing phones and disarray. The police confiscated the kids’ files and all but two computers. He looks much older than the sweet-faced young man I met at the airport last summer.

  He waves at the ringing phones. “Leave them, it’s just shitty journalists, pardon my word.” He fills us in, lowering his voice because we can hear the muffled sound of the kids listening outside the door.

  The fired worker didn’t go to local police, who are very familiar with Morava and support it; he went to the state police, a more powerful, often corrupt, entity. Peter says most are ex-KGB, “Who have no more jobs spying on Czechs and who hate Americans. Of course, they find no marks from abuse, which is problem for them because now it’s on the news everywhere about how they exposed American torture school.”

  State police apparently alerted the media ahead of time. Peter’s friends at the Santon Hotel told him that reporters spent the night there before the raid, “waiting like hungry dogs.”

  The dogs will be hungry all week. We’ll be besieged around the clock by reporters and news cameras from all over the globe, by state police, immigration officials, local gawkers. It’s the beginning of a tragedy, and the vultures have begun circling already.

  Glenn and Steve return and slip into their wing. They’re under house arrest, a gag order, and forbidden contact with the kids. What’s happening is already etched on Glenn’s beautiful face. She’s devastated and very grateful we’ve come.

  We’ll soon see why. The owners will send only a single consultant, a personable man named Roger, who will be gone with officials and lawyers most of the time. Which is staggering given the following: There’s no one really running the facility, all six people who directly supervise the kids, their “parents” here, are forbidden contact with them—Glenn, Steve, Peter, Zuza, Eva, Dusana (Tyna had quit two weeks earlier); a lot of the Czech staff has already fled because they fear the state police; reporters are traumatizing the kids by crawling through bushes to film in their bedroom windows; and no one is responding to the outright lies in the press.

  The company hasn’t spoken to the teens, they have no idea who was stripped, who was sent home, or that the “orphanage” turns out to be a halfway house where addicts offered them drugs. Some of the kids had sex, one with a Czech heroin addict, and the head of the investigation, Karel, stayed in a bedroom with some of them, clad only in his red underwear.

  “And they weren’t boxers, either, Miss Fontaine, it was so gross!”

  The company apparently hasn’t spoken to parents yet, either. Our second day there, a furious parent calls asking how the hell it’s possible his kid is calling him from the skies above his own home. We’ll be on phones 24/7 for the next week with parents, trying to inform them, console them, calm them.

  The company does begin to call parents, but their information is often outdated or incorrect. For some reason, they won’t call us for correct information and they avoid our calls to them. In fact, they’re clearly annoyed we’re here and the owner is “unreachable.” This is mystifying given that we are now running their school and seeing to the emotional well-being of over fifty kids whose lack of it landed them there to begin with—kids whose lives are in their care, and whose parents are paying dearly for that care.

  We’re worried their cavalier response means they’ve already decided Morava’s a lost cause. Not if we can help it. This is the first place that’s helped our kids and, despite our current dismay, we’re going to do whatever we can to save it.

  Three more mothers arrive and we immediately divide up duties: recreating student files; property patrol (press and gawkers trespass continually); photographing kids and facility for documentation; police liaison; media monitor; ticketing and packing up kids already transferring to stateside facilities. Thank God one of us is an experienced travel agent, because we’re afraid it’s going to come in handy. In the next eight days, none of us will get more than ten to twelve hours’ sleep total.

  We work round-the-clock trying to arrange calls between parents and kids, to reassure both of them. Most difficult for us is figuring what to say to the kids whose parents won’t talk to them, either out of indifference or because they’re still too angry at their kids. One boy keeps asking if his parents are back from vacation yet.

  A fragile Asian girl
whose father won’t speak to her begs me to convince him how sorry she is. He hasn’t written her once since she arrived a few months ago. She sinks to the floor, clutching my ankles, sobbing, “I know I’ve shamed my family! I want him to forgive me!” I understand now why Duane nearly blew us out of our seats for doubting their guilt. And how terrible my silence must have felt to Mia.

  We have very little time to spend with our own kids, though I observe Mia from a distance as much as I can. She cries less than the others, and then only for a moment. She often observes rather than participates, and she seems reflective, knowing. This is a Mia I have not seen before, perhaps one she is growing into.

  “Are you open to some feedback?”

  Sunny and I have cornered my mother for a talk. I wasn’t going to say anything but after asking Sunny to give her some papers, the look on her face changed my mind.

  “Are you crazy? She’ll bite my head off!”

  We steer my mom to the bottom of a staircase, away from the chaos. She looks both exasperated and amused, as if to say, I’ll go, but is this really necessary?

  “Okay, Sunny, tell her what you told me.”

  Her eyes bug out, then she takes a breath. “Hi, Ms. Fontaine. I’m sure you’re just the nicest person in the world, I was just a little afraid is all.”

  “Sunny was completely intimidated by you, Mom!” I interrupt. “Granted, some of that’s her, but you make yourself pretty unapproachable.”

  “Yeah, I can really see where Mia gets her stuff from!” Sunny exclaims before bashfully clapping her hand over her mouth.

  My mom laughs. “It’s okay, Sunny, I really appreciate this. I heard similar things in Discovery and obviously they haven’t sunk in! What ‘stuff’ did you notice?”

  Wow, that came out of left field. I’d made a whole game plan for how to approach her with the assumption that she’d get defensive and argumentative.

  “Mostly, how much you avoid emotion,” Sunny goes on more boldly. “I know whenever Mia’s in pain, she goes into action mode to avoid it.”

  “Sound familiar, Mom? Remember during the big earthquake when Paul and I ran outside freaking out and you were on your hands and knees looking for our shoes?”

  “I’m doing it now, aren’t I?” she interrupts.

  We look at each other a minute. She’s smiling ever so slightly and I can feel pride radiating from her, though I’m the one that’s proud of her.

  Each of us gets a group of kids to “parent.” I have eight boys who are absolutely charming. I’m surprised to find that the boys are more tender-hearted than the girls. They cry more openly and when they find out I still sing Mia lullabies, they want them, too.

  One boy, David, gravitates to me. He’s dark-haired and handsome, gawky-tall the way boys that age are. His family emigrated to the United States from Russia a few years back. David is the school’s biggest run risk. He’s told Steve he’s going to run and no one doubts him—he can speak passing Czech and hasn’t formed close relationships with other students. He’s the least upset or angry of all the kids, because he has no illusions.

  “State police are the same in Russia. You guys are wasting your time, they’re laughing at us.”

  My mother says almost the same thing when I call her.

  “Take Mia and get the hell out of there before they throw you all in jail.”

  “But we haven’t done anything wrong, Mom.”

  “You think that matters? You think everybody loves Americans?”

  The teachers stay on and classes are loosely maintained. The threat of arrest has kept Zuza and Dusana away for a few days, but the kids think Glenn’s returning means we’ve saved the day. They’re so excited, they put on a show for us in the lobby. The girls do a dance number, swinging their arms and ponytails. The boys do a rap number, with lyrics about their “Morava brothers” and their “magical child.” A few boys and girls eye each other, but there’s little typical teen mating behavior. They laugh and goof around in their dorky clothes like fifth-graders and keep asking parents to watch them do some trick or dance step. They’re playing, they’re happy. Such a simple thing, really. But, for us, a miracle.

  We parents exchange glances with each other as we watch them. We feel as if we’ve been allowed entrance to someplace precious and rare. We’re also secretly heartbroken, because we’re afraid all of this is going to vanish overnight. And they have no idea.

  Lupe’s going home. Glenn just came to us with a list of kids being pulled by their parents. Glenn stands as a rock as Lupe falls apart in her arms. We all cry with her. Everyone knows she’s not ready. Ricky will know she’s home within a week, and one of two things will happen—she’ll go back to him willingly, or she’ll go back by force.

  Is this what the media wants? The government? A week ago, everything in my life was falling into place. My mom forgave me, I’d finally reached Level 3, I was really beginning to feel happy.

  Now, I feel like my whole world is ending. They keep saying this will blow over, that everything’s fine, but it’s not! Girls who’ve become like sisters to me are leaving, Glenn has to sneak out of her room just to see us for a few minutes, and we haven’t seen Miss Zuza in days. We aren’t just crying for Lupe, we’re crying for ourselves.

  We call a press conference to counter the increasingly ridiculous news reports. Overnight, their little puppy Gizmo has become a vicious dog kept inside to menace the kids. The company tells us not to let the media inside. We’d ignore them, but we’re afraid they won’t take our own kids in their other schools if Morava closes.

  Everyone agrees it’s best to let the kids make statements rather than be interviewed. They’re afraid of being hammered by journalists; they’ve already seen them in action. Before we go out, I realize it might have been a good idea to let the kids wear street clothes, a bit of makeup. Mia’s complaints about the food were justified—all the kids have the same pasty, pimply complexions. The girls haven’t had haircuts in months and it looks like it.

  At the appointed time, we walk outside and we’re swarmed by media from the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. We haven’t said a word, but already most of them are looking at the parents as if we’re child abusers. They’re annoyed that they can’t directly question the kids.

  “They don’t trust you. You’ve lied about people they love. You’ve also trespassed and been generally uncivilized.”

  “Hey!” A journalist yells from the side of the building. “Come see this beast!” Half of them rush over with their cameras to where the tracking dog’s yard is. Ify is a beautiful, sweet-natured German shepherd. He’s void of aggression by training and breeding and will bark only when he makes a find.

  The poor thing cowers as they taunt him and poke a stick through the fence in a fruitless attempt to make him bark for cameras. A British reporter looks at me with complete disgust. Her colleagues are terrorizing a caged dog whose sole purpose is to save lives, and she’s looking askance at me?

  With little exception, they taunt the kids almost as much as they did the dog and are downright contemptuous of the parents. Most of them simply refuse to believe what the kids are saying; they hardly let them speak. Despite being asked to simply let the kids make statements, they grill them knowing that kids can’t help but answer. Many are rude and aggressive, even as tears stream down the kids’ faces. At one point the parents try to stop the journalists but the kids insist on talking to them in the hopes they’ll listen.

  Our kids behave remarkably. These once angry, self-destructive drug addicts and delinquents are confident and polite, honest and respectful. This has elicited the very best in them.

  I can’t believe these people call themselves professionals! Several of us came out to talk about Morava, but unless we’re discussing some minor flaw, like the food or the uniforms, they keep cutting us off. I listen to Sunny try to stammer out her story.

  “The food’s not the greatest but—”

  “Do they withhold food as punishmen
t?”

  “No, I never said—”

  “But you’re not satisfied with your diet, right? Do they lock you in rooms by yourself? Why aren’t you allowed outside? Have you ever been tied up?”

  This is what they focus on after Sunny told them how long she’s been clean for, how she no longer has the desire to self-mutilate, how amazing Glenn is? Why aren’t they listening to us? It’s humiliating.

  I’m shaking by the time Miss Olga ushers us back inside. This could have been the difference between Morava staying open or not, but they already have their minds made up, their stories written.

  Ruza knows how upsetting this has all been. She’s waiting for us with our favorite meal, pancakes, and is doling out extra jelly and sugar. We jump at the sound of a dropped fork. It’s Miss Olga, she’s crying.

  “Don’t cry, Miss Olga!” we chorus. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  “Of course not!” she cries, opening her arms to let in fourteen panicked girls. “I’m here still, girls, I’m always here.”

  I don’t know what we’d do if she left. Over the past few months we’ve become as close with her as we are with Miss Zuza. It’s horrifying that the very people who helped change my life might be going to jail for it, to see the people who gave us strength and support break down from exhaustion and fear.

  “They’re shutting Morava down for good.”

  Glenn’s called us into her room. “They have no evidence, the kids all admitted lying. But after all this media, the state police will never admit publicly they were wrong. They’re charging us with cruelty and abuse anyway. Karel told me flat out he’ll dig till he finds something to hang it on.”

  She starts to cry. “They’re charging Zuza and Peter, too.”