not a myth left from the ghetto

Tough work week this week, and it is only barely half over. Monday night I had to sit in on a group for parents who have children that were sexually abused. Tuesday I was set to observe a group for parents in one of the poorest sections of town but no one at the site had any idea what I was talking about. Last night was a group led by a Philadelphia Narcotics Bureau officer for parents trying to get their children out of juvenile justice placement. That was held at a mental health and substance abuse center, so most of the parents there had some pretty hefty issues of their own.

I've had way more experience with sex offenders and their victims than any nice white girl from Pennsylvanilla ever should, but this was my first time speaking with parents about their children's rapes since having Jake. With new eyes I watched the guilt and sorrow pass across a mother's face while she talks about how she never suspected her loving and supportive husband of being the cause of her daughter's delinquency, promiscuity, and mental health issues, the anger that rises in a man's neck when he recounts the day his daughter was lured into an 80's model Chevy Van right in front of the house while the family was busy setting the table just right for a holiday dinner, the frustration of a woman who is unable to move out of a home that sits two doors down from the third grader who violently molested her five year-old son because subsidized housing requires that you must live in your first placement for two years or face serious penalties that pretty much guarantee you will never rent in these parts again. The Housing Authority Board does not see the situation as being dangerous since both mothers agree to keep their children apart from one another and have been sanctioned to supervise their children at all times for the duration of their leases. The boy who's mother I met with is not allowed to play on the street with the other neighborhood kids, and can only have indoor playdates in his living room with a social worker present. The other boy was sanctioned to therapy and can go anywhere his mother feels like watching him go. Since he was so young it was deemed that he didn't know the nature of his offense. We used to have a saying when I worked in sex crimes about how no victim ever goes unpunished. Ain't that the truth.

Tuesday night in "the Bottom" of Philly was hype, as they say there. It was 80 degrees, everyone was out, everyone was drinking, and everyone was nekkid. It was like a damn rap video out there, and I loved it. It was reassuring to see some of the dealers who used to keep me safe when I was doing field work out there a few years ago, and some of the prostitutes who made sure I got to the bus stop safe and sound if I was out after dusk are still running around. People like that don't have much of a shelf life in this town these days.
The Q's were fired up, and no one messes with a preppy Weber or little red Coleman out that way. Oil barrels are cut in half and loaded up with eighty different parts of a chicken, seventeen different sausages, half pound burgers, peppers, onions, corn, and brontosaurus ribs. Everyone is happy, everyone says 'what's up?', and everyone ducks inside when the streetlights come on because someone is getting dead in that kind of weather. I think Philadelphia is up to 96 or 97 murders so far this year. The news teams make a sport of it and keep us abreast of how many people were killed:how many days have passed in 2007. We got off lucky last night since the temperatures dropped. It was way to cold for vengeance and mayhem. I think we're holding strong at 97:88 as of today. For the first time in all my years in this town I look over my shoulder when I walk through the projects. It never used to be like that. Damned kids these days, ruining everything.

Last night was by far the worst. Officer Brunswick brought a PowerPoint presentation along with him to the medical center on Broad and Wyoming(ish). The Bureau has a program called HEADS UP that aims to educate parents and teens about drugs and alcohol. Old hat, you say? Not like this. Far from a Scared Straight approach, the presentation included people who have been effected by drugs and violence over the past decade or so. The video went over the types of drugs that are out there, and I was surprised that no one attending the class had ever heard of LSD ("now why the hell would someone put acid in they mouth? That just trifling', burnin' yoself and shit", one formerly crack-addicted mom asked) and only a few had heard of Ecstasy. The ones that did, love it and thought it was harmless. Three of ten had heard of date rape drugs, and all were surprised when the heard what was in meth. People like us (blog readers tend not to dabble in crackwhoredom) just assume that the education and information is out there, but it really isn't. A lot of heavy drug users don't go to school much past sixth or seventh grade, and their mothers were too busy smoking crack and shooting up to tell them about the dangers of what they were doing. "If it feels good, do it" rules the land. There is not likely to be a television in the house that tunes into TLC, Discovery, or PBS and when kids are getting the facts from the music they listen to and the movies they watch and from what their friends and family do, you can imagine the way their brains work. It's scary what is normal in some of these neighborhoods.

The video showed overdose victims, and what can happen if you don't die. I'd rather be dead, personally. It showed victims of DUI accidents and victims of stray bullets. The dead ones were horrible, the ones who managed to survive were ghastly.

Men and women who've gone down in history as cold-blooded monsters were shown. As children. Their mothers gave the police home videos from Christmas and first birthdays and pictures from the first day of kindergarten and home-made Mother's Day cards and all the stuff that makes you love your baby so much it feels like your heart just might burst. Sweet little boys and girls who made some bad choices and landed themselves in jail or worse were paraded across the screen as I fought back tears and the urge to run home and kiss Jake.

And the worst part of all this, all the stories were local. Every third or fourth dead kid was a friend or family member or neighbor of someone in the room. The ones we didn't know we remembered seeing his mother fall out in front of the news cameras, and her daughter lighting a candle for the memorial shrine that builds on the street corner where her pregnant mother was gunned down in front of her. Bad stuff.

This job is amazing, but it is taking a toll on my heart strings. I am working a few nights, and I feel like I am being robbed of time with Jake. When I get home I have to fight the urge to take Jake to bed with me so I can hold him all night long. But, as much as I don't want him to be a thugged out heroin addict who gets shot up in the hood and get 40s poured on his grave, I really don't want to be kicked in the chassis all night long. This stuff makes me tired and I need a good night's sleep.