By Grace Bauer

Beginning in 1998, with my son’s first arrest at the age of 12, I embarked on a journey that I was ill equipped to handle. When I gave birth to my children I had high hopes and dreams for them, this arrest and the succeeding problems that lay ahead for him were never apart of those hopes and dreams. I, as most families that find themselves involved in the juvenile and criminal justice systems, was incredibly naive and made decisions based on what system professionals told me, never considering that it wasn’t their job to help my son. Those decisions set a predictable course, for those with knowledge and understanding, for my son that would leave him emotionally and physically scarred for the rest of his life. I made those decisions without an understanding of what they meant for him or a conception of what it meant to have a “system-involved” child. For the next three years, I walked this path alone in confusion and isolation I sat quietly:

. . . in meetings where professionals talked about my son and didn’t say anything because they presented themselves as the experts and seldom asked me anything

. . . in court rooms in front of a judge without an attorney or advocate because I was told an attorney would only slow down my son getting the help he needed and I believed this lie to be the truth

. . . outside the court house, on the day my son was adjudicated delinquent and sent to a far-off facility because my legs would not carry me away from my baby and I still believed I had done what was right

. . . by the phone for days awaiting a call from the facility to inform me of where my son would be placed and when I would be able to visit

. . . through 2 1/2 hour drives, and then 5 1/2 hour drives, to visit my son in prison, and sometimes be turned away upon arrival because he was in the infirmary or in isolation

. . . in the car on the long drives back home with tears running down my cheeks and my heart in misery, the images of my son’s battered body swirling through my mind, feeling sickened by my powerlessness and stupidity

. . .  I sat through a visit with an attorney, nearly 3 months into what I believed would be a 90 day stay in an excellent program, only to be told by the attorney that my son would not be coming home until his 18th birthday and that, when he left that prison, I should buy him a ticket to Angola State Penitentiary because that is where most of these kids ended up

. . . on the phone with one of the first teachers permitted inside the Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth in Northeast Louisiana while she explained she had assessed my son and found him in isolation where he appeared to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

. . . as I heard the diagnosis of my son with severe depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

. . . when the “New York Times” named the Tallulah prison, where my son was housed, “one of the worst in the nation”

But a new day would come when I no longer sat quietly. (more…)