Corridors Of Agony

By MICHAEL RILEY BALTIMORE

This is the story of a courthouse, a group of kids who passed through it one week and the people whose task it is to rescue them.

Clarence Mitchell Courthouse, a brooding Beaux Arts monolith in the heart of Baltimore, contains the Baltimore City Juvenile Court. Like the 2,500 similar juvenile courts across the nation, this is where the battles are being fought against some of America's toughest problems: drugs, disintegrating families, household violence. As these problems have grown worse over the past two decades, the judicial system designed to deal with them has crumbled. These courts are an indicator of the country's compassion for families and its commitment to justice, but increasingly they have neither the money nor the personnel to save most of the desperate young souls who pass through their doors. Almost no one seems to care.

To protect the children from the stigma of being branded as criminals, the proceedings of juvenile courts are hidden behind a veil of confidentiality. In an effort to show the strains on the system, a group of TIME correspondents was given unprecedented access to the Baltimore court. The identities of the children and their parents have been changed, but the stories are true, and they are typical.

Antwan

Ringed by Baltimore narcotics cops and sniffling into a tissue, Antwan Davey looks like a kid caught in a bureaucratic land of giants. Just three hours earlier, the cops nailed the skinny 10-year-old boy in a playground drug bust. Now, in a cinder-block squad room in east Baltimore, he slouches in a green office chair, unlaced Etonic tennis shoes just touching the floor.

Two teenage drug dealers, sullen and silent, sit nearby. Moments before their arrest, they had forced Antwan to hide their wares in his socks. "That's usually what they do now -- give the stuff to a little kid," says arresting officer Ed Bochniak, who watched the deal go down. "We were lucky to see it."

Crime and drugs are everywhere in America's inner cities. For Antwan, they were only a few yards away as the youngster floated high above his steamy ghetto playground on a turquoise-and-orange swing set. At the playground's edge two teenagers were selling vials of cocaine from a curbside stash. One dealer cut a score with a passing woman; looking over at Antwan, his partner spotted an opportunity.

Sauntering up to the youngster, the pusher demanded that Antwan serve as a hiding place for the stash or else face a beating. At first the child refused, then gave in. Business continued -- until the "Zone Rangers," an undercover Baltimore vice-and-narcotics squad that had the dealers under surveillance, suddenly sprinted into action. One team of Rangers nabbed the dealers; another pulled Antwan off the swing and confiscated the vials. By the time they reached the station house, the little boy had dissolved in tears.

Then Antwan got his first break. A juvenile-services worker sat down beside him. "Are you sorry for what you've done this evening?" he asked the boy. "Yes," mumbled Antwan. "Have you learned a lesson?" he asked. Another soft yes. Alongside the boy stood his mother Syrita, 30, an attractive woman whose soft face belies the rugged ghetto life she has led. The worker decided to let Antwan go home -- he had no prior arrests -- so long as she brought him to court the next day.

Syrita had tried repeatedly to warn Antwan of illicit goings-on at the playground. But such warnings carry little weight for a kid growing up on society's margin. Antwan lives in a storefront apartment just blocks from the drug-saturated playground. His mother and grandmother survive on public assistance, and his mother is battling depression with medication and counseling. His father is long gone.

The next day Antwan and his mom show up at juvenile court, which is crammed into the basement of Clarence Mitchell. The building's massive columns, vaulted ceilings and dimly lighted corridors conjure fleeting images of a dungeon. Children wander the hallways, a few in tears. The water fountains are too high for most to reach. Lawyers, their arms spilling over with folders, bustle about. Sheriff's deputies cast jaundiced eyes on it all.

Syrita Davey, dressed in a white blouse, purple skirt, hoop earrings, sits with her son in a noisy, claustrophobic interview room. Law student Harry Kassap, a volunteer in the public defender's office, listens to the boy's story. The defender's office, which represents indigent youthful offenders, usually has only a few minutes to learn about a case before the accused must appear before a master in chancery, one of the quasi-judicial hearing officers who presides in juvenile court. It does not take long for Kassap to become outraged. "The kid was a complete victim," he later observes, "yet the system treats him as an absolute criminal."

Antwan gets his second break. The defender's office assigns his file to chief public defender David Fishkin, a gentle giant who looks like a bearded Ichabod Crane. More than anything else, Fishkin decides, efforts must be made to keep Antwan "out of the system" by placing him in a "diversion" program, which offers counseling and individual attention rather than harsh penalties like incarceration. Like everyone else in the courthouse, Fishkin knows that once a kid falls deeper into the justice system, he may never get out. But the lawyer is worried that the prosecutor on the case may have something different in mind. He makes a call and discovers, to his dismay, that assistant state's attorney Mary McNamara, 29, a well-known hard-liner on drug issues, will oppose him.

"Oh," says a slightly flustered Fishkin.

"You sound disappointed," replies McNamara.

"Well, you know, I'd like to keep this case out of the system."

% "Dave, you know my policy on drug dealing," McNamara answers, then pauses. "But I'll read the report and keep an open mind."

A third break for Antwan: McNamara, who worked as a night bailiff to get through law school, is actually on Fishkin's side this time. She was born and raised in New Jersey in a blue-collar family; her hard-nosed reputation is a reflection of a strong sense of outrage at the inner-city disaster. "Sometimes," she says, "I get home at night and I think my name is 'Bitch.' They stop being kids to you after a while. Some of them are vicious and nasty. They'd shoot you in a heartbeat."

For Antwan, however, her anger momentarily softens. After making some phone calls, McNamara finds a spot for the youngster in Choice, an acclaimed program that enlists college graduates to keep track of wayward kids and ensure that help is available to them. Sometimes volunteers visit offenders a dozen times a day to keep them on the straight and narrow. McNamara passes the news on to Fishkin.

Antwan finds out his fate later that day. "You don't want to be arrested again, do you?" state's attorney McNamara asks the youngster at his court appearance. He shakes his head no. She tells him that a Choice worker will be his big brother. "What's your job going to be?" she inquires. Replies Antwan: "Obey my mom or my Choice worker."

By this time, everyone in the courtroom realizes that this may be the most elusive quarry, a kid who can be saved. The tone in the courtroom changes. Master Bradley Bailey, presiding over the case, asks Antwan if he likes to read. The boy says yes. So Bailey writes something on a slip of paper and hands it to him. "Can you read that?"

"D . . . aaa . . . vid Fish . . . kin," Antwan responds. Directs Bailey: "You concentrate on doing that -- reading -- and leave all the other stuff out on the street." He remands Antwan to his mother's custody. In 60 days he must return to court to demonstrate how he's doing.

The outlook for the two teenage drug dealers who were arrested with Antwan -- Daryl Williams and Donnell Curtis -- is not as hopeful. Locked up overnight, they also appear in court before Master Bailey. Daryl's aunt sits in the courtroom, her eyes surrounded by dark circles and her face a tight constriction of lines. A drug addict on the nod, she slumps drowsily against the bench, a handkerchief over her mouth and nose. Donnell's mother sits alert and angry in the back row. Both youngsters wear a hard, empty-eyed look of fury.

McNamara argues for locking the boys up until their full-dress court hearing in thirty days. Assistant public defender Robin Ullman requests community detention, which would allow the accused to stay at home until then. Bailey decides to lock them up. "What's that mean?" asks Williams, a tall, powerfully built kid. "It means you stay in Charles Hickey School until the trial," says Bailey.

"What?" shoots back Williams. "I didn't have nothin' to do with that little boy." Ullman, prim and bespectacled, jumps up and orders her client to be quiet. But he won't shut up. "Fed up, man," he curses as a courthouse jailer leads him back toward a holding cell. His loud protests echo down the hall.

Williams has good reason to fear Hickey School, a grim correctional facility. The accused dealer told the arresting cops he was only 15, but at Hickey a counselor recognizes him as someone else entirely. "Tyrone, are you back? I thought you were too old for us now." Daryl is really Tyrone Roberts, age 19. He's headed for adult court.

Roberts too was once a lost youngster. He fell into the court system 11 years ago, accused of malicious destruction. He was already a neglected and abused child, a runaway and a truant. His mother wanted to kick him out of her home when he was 10 years old. At 15 he fractured a kid's skull with a brick for teasing him and was later arrested for arson. Psychologists claimed he suffered from neurological dysfunction, attention-deficit disorder and poor impulse control. For a time, Ritalin, an antihyperactivity drug, helped. But two years ago, he was arrested for assault, and in 1991 he was busted for possession of cocaine and joyriding.

As Donnell is handcuffed and led out the courtroom door, his mother is asked if she would like to talk to him. "I ain't got nothin' much to say," she mutters, turning away. Her son does not look at her as he walks out.

Antwan's case is one of 1,070 hearings that moved through the court in this single week. Last year juvenile court accounted for 61% of all Eighth Circuit Court hearings. Moving cases through the gridlocked court is often more important than dispensing justice. In 1991 about 14,000 new cases were filed, or 20% more than five years ago. Delinquency cases jumped 15%, while abuse and neglect cases soared 40%.

Emily

Nearly 80% of juvenile-court work involves youthful offenders like Antwan. The rest focuses on abused and neglected children. Perhaps the most tragic case to pass through Baltimore's juvenile court this week involved Emily Travis, 6. Several months earlier, Emily had told two department-of-social- services workers that her father sexually abused both her and her sister Tracy, 10, in the bedroom while their mother cooked dinner. Since then, Emily has been in a foster home. The court hopes to find a permanent place for her.

Clinging to a doll that plays It's a Small World, Emily walks into the court's waiting room, a windowless place, where children play with a well-worn set of plastic blocks. This is not her first visit. Three years ago, high levels of lead were found in Emily's blood; her parents resisted health- department efforts to rid their home of the toxic metal. Court papers described the home as filthy, unsanitary and insect infested.

Apparently little has changed since then. Lawyers in Master Bright Walker's courtroom pass around recent photographs of the same house. The photos display insects crawling in a bowl of soup; trash containers overflowing; food spoiling on a table; bare, broken mattresses; pornographic pictures strewn on the floor.

The Travis family could be torn straight from the pages of a William Faulkner novel: a clan to rival the Snopeses in its deviance. Emily's older brother maims rats in an alley for recreation. Her younger brother's medical reports indicate he may have suffered anal penetration. Emily claims her father has touched her breasts and genitalia.

To sort out the family's history of incestuous relationships, lawyers devise a complicated family tree. The man accused of molesting Emily is not only her father but also her step-grandfather. Emily and her three siblings are the result of an incestuous relationship their mother had with her stepfather. And Emily had been sleeping in a bed with her mother and her father.

Child-welfare worker Viola Mason, who removed Emily from her parents' house, is concerned that the family may again slip out of the control of social- service authorities. The department wants the court to place Emily in a foster home.

This court, as parens patriae (literally father of the country), spends a lot of time trying to salvage children's lives and build new homes for them. But a climate of increased litigiousness and confrontation, along with a lack of money, has made the task tougher. In addition, the overburdened Baltimore ! city social-services department has pathetically inadequate means to care for the children after they are removed from their homes, a situation that undermines the department's mission from the start.

Before Emily's hearing begins, her Legal Aid Bureau lawyer, Joan Sullivan, takes her by the hand and walks her upstairs to a quiet corner. She asks Emily how she feels in her foster home. "I'm still scared," says Emily. "At night I see shadows on the wall. Monsters." The social-services department wants to place Emily with a cousin, but the young girl wants to live with her grandmother. No matter how Sullivan feels about the matter, she is obligated to express to the court whatever Emily, her client, wants. And that may not always appear to be the best solution.

Sullivan asks if Emily knows why she had to leave home. Emily says she does not, and then she spontaneously recants her claims of abuse. "That wasn't for real," she says. "I lied." But her denial rings hollow.

"Do you like your dad?" Sullivan continues. Yes, says Emily. "He gives me money." She adds that her father promised to give her gifts and a party when she comes home.

As often happens in these circumstances, the lawyers cannot agree on a solution for Emily. Since the girl has recanted and no physical evidence of abuse exists, it appears she may go home with her parents. "It's an injustice," observes child-abuse expert Betsy Offerman, who has followed Emily's case. "It seems that no matter what we know, there is always a loophole that means the child will go back into the situation, and the cycle continues." Offerman explains that there is a tremendous incentive for children to deny sexual abuse. "The message kids get is, 'If I say something, I will go to court and get taken away from my family,' " Offerman says. "They start to think it is better for them if they keep their mouths shut." Offerman used to be a therapist in the social-service department's sexual-abuse-treatment unit, which was closed in 1990 because of budget constraints.

As the lawyers continue to argue in a corridor, Emily falls asleep on her cousin's shoulder in the courtroom. Then Master Walker arrives. At first things go badly for the social-services department. Emily's lawyer prompts a social-services worker to concede that the allegedly filthy house had been cleaned in time for a later scheduled visit. The attorney for the child's mother then gets the worker to admit that Emily's older sister Tracy has denied all charges of sexual abuse. Under questioning from the father's lawyer, the worker acknowledges that there is no physical evidence of sexual abuse.

Then Offerman testifies. Emily, she says, described her father's fondling as a game. "She talked about it as if she were going to a birthday party," says Offerman. "She had no sense of taboo around this." Offerman relates that when the father was told Emily was being removed from his home, he retorted, "You ask Tracy. She'll say nothing happened."

Finally Emily herself sits down on a wooden chair pulled up at the end of a long table to the side of the master's raised desk. "Do you remember talking to Miss Betsy?" asks Emily's lawyer, pointing to Offerman. The distraught child says nothing but fingers a piece of chalk she has carried from an interview room. "Was what you told her the truth?" the lawyer asks. Emily shakes her head no, then buries it in her elbow.

A few minutes later, social-services lawyer Donna Purnell tries to cut past Emily's reluctance to admit what she believes happened. "Are you scared that if you tell, you won't go home?" she asks? Emily nods yes. "If you said something to Betsy, would you be scared to say it now?" Emily nods her head yes again. "Does Daddy ever tickle you?" "On my feet. On my leg." Just 15 ft. away, her father leans forward, rests his elbows on the bench in front of him and stares right at Emily.

The final witness is Tracy, a chubby girl who smacks on chewing gum until Master Walker makes her remove it. In short order, the girl denies her father ever touched Emily and says Emily never told her of any abuse. She also claims she is not afraid of her father.

"Is there a reason why you wouldn't tell the truth if your father did touch you?" asks Purnell, trying to unmask the apparent cover-up. Tracy says no. Suddenly, Master Walker's loud voice booms across the courtroom. "She's giving more signals than a third-base coach for the Boston Red Sox," Walker says, gesturing toward the girl's mother. He has been watching her coach Tracy from the bench nearby.

Afternoon has slipped into evening. Emily's mother yawns. When closing arguments end, Walker, a kindly 20-year veteran of the bench who writes haiku and dabbles in abstract painting, rules that sexual abuse did, in fact, occur. After listening to two hours of testimony, Walker is convinced that Emily has been sexually abused by her father and wants to protect her from having it happen again. He orders Emily to remain in foster care and asks social services to evaluate the suitability of placing her in a relative's home.

Doll in hand, Emily leaves the courtroom. In the empty corridor, her siblings hug her and say goodbye. A few minutes later, Emily walks with her caseworker out of the building and back to her foster home, perhaps separated from her parents forever. The court has done what it can.

Timothy and Tommy

Julie Sweeney often wonders if her two cute grandsons traded one horrible situation for another when they were uprooted from their mother's home and placed in foster care. Today she has brought Timothy, 11, and Tommy, 9, to court to review their foster-care status. Their mother, Cassandra, Sweeney's 31-year-old daughter, is homeless; she chose cocaine over her two sons. There's a warrant out for her arrest on charges of prostitution, so she won't appear in court today. "Cocaine became her lover," Sweeney explains. "She told me the high was so good that she wanted it, even if it meant losing everything she had. She does love her children, but she loves Mr. C. more."

Sweeney, in her early 60s, is not well enough to take care of her grandsons. She waited for more than two years for the social-services department to rescue them from their mother's destructive grasp. "I was sending food to them by taxi at their mother's house," she tells Legal Aid Bureau lawyer Lisa Watts as they sit in the stuffy waiting room. "They were abused and hungry. They turned into children of the streets." Despite the grandmother's frequent requests, the children were not removed from the home. "((My daughter)) was selling furniture out of the house and threatened to kill the younger boy. I called protective services again. They went in and said the house looked O.K. It's the laxest organization I've ever seen."

Finally Sweeney decided to become the children's forceful advocate. "Push, push, push," she says. "Nothing ever works according to the system. Someone in the family has to do it." Two years ago, when Cassandra's drug habit became uncontrollable, Sweeney says the social services informed her it had no home available in which to place her grandchildren. So the next day Sweeney went to collect the boys. Her daughter, high on drugs, slumped on the couch, while men walked in to buy drugs from someone upstairs. Cassandra was using cocaine, PCP and Ritalin. A social-services caseworker told Sweeney she could ; not take her grandchildren, but she did anyway. After she got them home, they all broke into tears.

Then Sweeney called the social-services department and explained that she was not well enough to care for her grandsons herself, but she wanted the brothers kept together. Instead the boys were placed in separate foster homes. Tommy, the younger, slept on a urine-stained mattress without a sheet. "He cried pitifully," Sweeney recalls. "He wouldn't eat or play. He sat with a shopping bag under his arm." The youngster was returned to his grandmother's house, but soon his mother, who temporarily cleaned herself up with the help of a detox program, regained custody of the boys.

Things only got worse. One night Timothy walked downstairs to find his mother injecting drugs into her arm. Within months, the children were back with social services.

This time, after reviewing the case, lawyer Watts has designed an agreement that allows the boys to remain under official jurisdiction and continue a program of therapy. Sweeney will retain visitation rights. The boys want to live with their aunt; the department will try to help the woman afford better housing so that she can take them in. Finally Tommy will be assigned a Court- Appointed Special Advocate volunteer, who will look out for his best interests.

Almost every child at Clarence Mitchell could use an advocate, but there aren't enough to go around. "It's overwhelming, and nobody really has the time to prepare them for what's happening," says Diane Baum, who heads Baltimore's more than 160 volunteer advocates. What is needed, says juvenile- court administrative Judge David Mitchell, is "a fundamental change in the way society views the family and children." Nothing less than that will make the system work.

Antwan's Hope

Sometimes, though, against all odds, it does work. Days after Antwan Davey left court with his mother, Choice counselor Bob Cherry, a graduate from the tough streets of Boston's Southie district, paid his second visit. Like a shy colt, Antwan leaned close to Cherry as the young man drove the boy around town in his white Chevy Monte Carlo, its throaty exhaust pipes growling.

Everyday Cherry and members of his Choice team keep tabs on Antwan; so far, the boy's mother has only good things to say about the program. "They say he's got to call everyday," she says. "He has to come home at certain times and not hang out in the wrong places. I don't let him hang out at the playground anymore." Even Antwan is impressed with Cherry. "He seems like I can trust him."

After the car ride, Antwan steps back inside his apartment to do his homework. His mother unscrews the light bulb from the kitchen socket and screws it into the living-room ceiling. Its harsh glow illuminates a poster on a far wall of a black boy crying. "He will wipe away all tears from their eyes," the poster reads, "and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain. All of that has gone forever. -- Revelation 21: 4"

With reporting by Melissa Ludtke and James Willwerth/Baltimore