Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love (7 page)

Chapter 7

Nowhere Child

The next part of the
Study of the Child
explained in nauseating detail how it was that Danielle finally came into state custody. It amazed Bernie and me how extreme conditions had to be for the DCF to finally say, “Enough.”

The third complaint was pretty much like the ones taken three years earlier. A call to the hotline came in at 12:34 p.m. on July 12, 2005. It charged that the mother regularly left Danielle under her brother David’s supervision, that she was still wearing diapers and was not potty-trained, that she cried or mumbled but was otherwise nonverbal, that she might be mentally handicapped, and that David was certainly mentally handicapped.

Once again, I thought that whoever made that call had to have been in the house to have seen her. Could it have been another “paramour” of the mother’s? A girlfriend of one of the sons? Were they still living in the same apartment complex? Everything in the report raised more questions for me than it answered.

The day after the call, a DCF investigator and a police car were sent to the house and met there. As Garet continued reading, I was skimming over the same words. It was so much worse than the first two times the DCF had come to investigate. Danielle was found sleeping in a filthy bedroom that contained old soiled mattresses. The floor was covered in trash and dirty diapers. There were countless cockroaches and spiders. The child was extremely thin, with ribs poking from her body. She was dirty, with matted hair, numerous bug bites all over her body, and scratches. She was dressed only in a wet diaper and was nonverbal, only grunting or crying.

The mother stated that the daughter was mentally delayed in some capacity, but she had never taken her to a doctor to get a diagnosis, nor did she have a pediatrician or take her daughter for medical attention. The child was not on Medicaid and, according to the mother, was denied for Florida Kidcare.

Florida Kidcare is a program that provides health insurance for children between birth and age eighteen. There’s a fairly extensive application to be filled out and a lengthy review process. I couldn’t imagine why Danielle would have been denied. More likely, her mother never applied because she didn’t want to do anything that would bring attention to her daughter or the conditions under which she was living.

The mother claimed that the daughter ate all of the time and that she especially liked to eat canned pasta, like ravioli. She also said that she bathed her daughter about four times a week.

The rest of the house was observed to be in “deplorable condition.” There were cats and a dog roaming freely and animal feces. Roaches were crawling on the dishes, the walls, and the floor of the kitchen. The refrigerator had food but also dead roaches in the drawers and inside the door of the freezer. “It appeared that the house was infested with roaches. The house appeared to have not been cleaned in some time and smelled of cigarette smoke and cat urine.”

From there, the report jumped to Danielle being seen by the Child Protective Team “due to concern regarding her delays and numerous bug bites.”

I stopped Garet to clarify. Where was she seen and when? Garet had a lot more information on the case and on Danielle than was chronicled in the
Child Study.
She told us that Detective Mark Holste had made the call from the Plant City Police Department. He and his partner first saw the DCF employee standing by her car in the yard, crying. She had gone inside to find the child and told the officers that it was the worst case she had ever seen. They went into the house to question the mother and see the little girl. It was Detective Holste who carried Danielle out of the house and told the DCF worker to let her supervisor know she would be taking Danielle to the hospital.

Garet said that police photographs used as evidence in the hearing showed a clapboard shack, dingy and mud-spattered, with peeling paint and a rusted tin roof. Inside was a tiny living room with broken-down furniture and a carpet so covered with roaches, dead and alive, that it actually crunched under Detective Holste’s shoes. Everywhere he looked, ashtrays were overflowing with cigarette butts, with more crushed out on the floor. The kitchen and the bathroom were vile—more dead cockroaches, food-encrusted dishes, greasy pans, a cat litter box and feces, and black mold over every surface of the bathroom.

But it was the photos of Danielle’s room that Garet said horrified everyone the most. The room was in the rear of the house, dark, with one window boarded up, and the other broken in half, the jagged edge of glass halfway up the frame. On the floor was the bare mattress where Danielle spent her days and nights—soiled, stained, moldy, its sides ripped open, stuffing and springs popping out onto the floor. Piles of clothes and mounds of trash were on another mattress overlapping the one Danielle lived on. Except for a table with a small television, there was no other furniture in the tiny room, which was smaller than a walk-in closet.

When Detective Holste took Danielle from the home, she was wearing only a dripping diaper, and the clothing in the house was so moldy and dirty, it couldn’t be worn. He wrapped her up in a blanket, got her one of the stuffed animals he kept in the squad car trunk to comfort frightened children, and sent her to the hospital with the social worker.

In my mind, I was seeing Detective Holste as the action hero who swooped in and rescued Danielle from the evil stepmother, the deplorable house, the cockroach colony, the bug bites and scratches, the cat urine and dog feces, the cigarette smoke, the matted hair infested with lice, the lack of clothing, toys, and decent food. Danielle was a nearly seven-year-old speechless child, clothed only in a dirty diaper and hidden away in a filthy bedroom on a soiled mattress.

It took all of that misery, Detective Holste, and whoever placed that last call to the hotline before an appropriate response was made and Danielle was taken out of the hellhole she had endured for almost seven years.

This mother’s utter indifference to her daughter’s well-being and her skill at scamming the system merged with the complete dysfunction of Florida’s DCF and nearly resulted in another story about a child falling through the cracks and turning up dead.

I didn’t believe Danielle fell through the cracks. She was pushed—by her mother, by her brothers, and by the agency charged with protecting children. For the first seven years of her life, Danielle existed nowhere but in her own world. It had to have been better than the world her mother imprisoned her in.

Chapter 8

Into the System

We were on page eight of the
Child Study
, which was fourteen pages in all. I had lost my appetite altogether. I excused myself to go the restroom and get a little break.

I splashed some water on my face and looked in the mirror over the sink. It occurred to me that if we were able to adopt Danielle, she would be the only person in our house with brown eyes. Bernie, William, and I all have blue eyes. My boys Paul and Steven have blue eyes.

I had to laugh at myself. Of all the things we would confront if we were able to do this, all of the obstacles and challenges, I was worried about Danielle feeling left out of our family because she didn’t have blue eyes? I dried my face, took a deep breath, and went back to the table.

Bernie and Garet were chatting like old friends, which is Bernie’s way. He makes personal connections quickly and naturally, whether it’s with the paint guy at Lowe’s, the checkout woman at the grocery store, the new preacher at church, or a little girl sitting in a swing, deep in her own world. Bernie would make a great Wal-Mart greeter, except that he wouldn’t be content with simply welcoming shoppers and answering questions; he would have to walk the person back to the small appliance department, help her pick out the best blender, coffeemaker, and electric frying pan, then push her buggy back to the checkout line while asking how old her children were and where they went to school.

Bernie was grilling Garet—in the nicest possible way—on how she came to be involved in the case. He wanted more details: where was she when she first saw Danielle, what did Danielle do, what did Garet do, was Danielle afraid, did she cry? Had Garet met Detective Holste? Could we meet Detective Holste? How did Danielle’s picture come to be in the Heart Gallery? When could we take her home with us? He sounded just like Willie on the phone. Like father, like son. These were the same questions I had, but I also knew we needed to get back to Fort Myers Beach, or Willie would stay up all night waiting for us.

Garet looked a bit overwhelmed, which I took as my cue to pick up our copy of the report and ask, “Where were we?”

She resumed reading on page eight, and we tracked through a synopsis of the legal proceedings that had taken place since Danielle was removed from the home on July 13, 2005. A shelter hearing was held the next day, which Garet said is required by law to take place within twenty-four hours. The shelter petition was granted, and a guardian ad litem—a person who has the legal authority to care for the personal interests of another person—was assigned to the case. For the first time in her life, Danielle would have an adult advocating for her. I murmured a prayer of thanks for the guardian ad litem program.

Along with the guardian ad litem, Danielle was appointed an attorney ad litem to execute all of the legal proceedings that were ahead of her.

Most important in my mind, July 14 was the day that Garet first encountered the case, because she happened to be in the courtroom on another matter and had stayed with some other agency workers to listen in on the case everyone was whispering about.

At the next hearing on August 9, the judge ordered that Danielle be tested for hearing, speech, and disability and that a comprehensive assessment be completed. The judge also ordered that the mother have no visitation with the child until further order of the court. I almost spit my coffee across the table; it seemed ridiculous that there would be any possibility of allowing the woman within a hundred yards of Danielle.

On September 27, Hillsborough Kids Inc. (HKI) and the attorney general filed a Petition for Expedited Termination of Parental Rights. Garet explained to us that this meant that HKI would not file a case plan, which is required if the parties are working for reunification of the family. No one, Garet assured us, thought reunification of Danielle with her mother and brothers was feasible.

The advisory hearing was scheduled for November 3, then rescheduled for November 6, and the trial date was set for February 2006 to allow time for the mother to be assessed by a therapist.

I felt a shudder of revulsion to see the last paragraph on the page. It consisted of words copied verbatim from a handwritten letter the mother had mailed to the North Care Center on March 23.

To Whom It May Concern: My daughter Danielle is a young beautiful lady. I care for her for 6 years until you took her away from me. She was never abuse by any family member. She was love and care for. She was well feed and happy and healthy. I used to read to her, take her to the park, take her shopping with me, take her to the library. My house became a rundown do to I just started my new job and I was sick for 3 months with bronchitis. I have my life straight out now and I need to get my daughter back. She is the love of my life and I cry everyday for Danielle. Please let me see her again. I need to know she is okay or hear her on the phone. Thank you, [mother].

Bernie looked at Garet and said exactly what I was thinking. “What world is that woman living in? How can she think anyone would believe her?”

Luckily, the courts did not believe her. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time that someone who was about to lose her child through her own actions had lied. The Termination of Parental Rights Trial was held from August 21 through August 26. The mother, her boys, the Plant City Police Department, HKI, the guardian ad litem, and Dr. Kathleen Armstrong all gave testimony.

The Petition for Termination of Parental Rights was accepted after the trial, and Judge Martha Cook entered a sixteen-page Order of Adjudication of Dependency and Judgment of Involuntary Termination of Parental Rights as to the mother and the father on September 21, 2006. I imagined a gavel coming down on a block of wood as she pronounced the decision.

The date rang a bell in my head. I turned back to the cover page of the report. Just under her name, Danielle Ann Crockett, and beside her photo was “Child’s Date of Birth: September 21st, 1998.” Below that: “Date of Adjudication: September 21, 2006.” I showed Bernie, and tears came to his eyes as they had to mine. I’m sure it was a coincidence that Danielle was emancipated on her eighth birthday. But we took it as a sign that God was sending his precious child the most beautiful gift, clearing the way for her new life to begin.