By Jared Curtis

The holiday season is upon us, and this is the time for family togetherness — eating Thanksgiving dinner, singing carols, attending holiday plays and waking up Christmas morning to a tree full of presents.

But what if you woke up Christmas morning and your parents weren’t there? How would you feel? Every year children are removed from their homes because of abuse, violence or neglect. Are the parents to blame? Are organizations like the Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) to blame? Opinions vary, but despite mistakes and bad judgments, there is hope that families that have been torn apart can rebuild.

“When children come into the child welfare system, it’s essential to work with families,” said Roger Munns, a spokesperson for DHS. “One of the changes in recent years is to convene a ‘family team meeting’ in which the family gets to invite all the players who are important to them, such as a coach, neighbor, an aunt, a church pastor or grandma. The meeting is facilitated by DHS. The hopeful conclusion is that everybody knows what needs to happen, and when it needs to happen, for the kids.”

The mission of DHS is to help individuals and families achieve safe, stable, self-sufficient and healthy lives, contributing to the economic growth of the state, Munns said. It has more than 5,000 employees covering a very large spectrum of programs including everything from food stamps to mental health institutions to the collection of child support.

“The stress of poverty, not poverty itself, is a factor in many abuse or neglect situations,” said Munns. “But it’s essential to also point out that child abuse takes place in all sectors of society regardless of income. Most people who have limited incomes do an excellent job of raising their children, just as do most people of any income.”

The federal government’s Administration for Children and Families reports that in 2004, approximately 3.5 million children were involved in investigations of alleged abuse or neglect, and an estimated 872,000 children were determined to have been abused or neglected. An estimated 1,490 children died that year because of abuse or neglect. As of Sept. 30, 2004, there were 517,000 children in the United States in foster care.

“The length a child is without their parents varies, and it depends completely on a determination by a judge on whether the children are safe to return to their families,” Munns said. “But it cannot take forever. In the old days, children sometimes stayed in the foster system for years while their parents got around to making changes or not. Today the law requires states to move swiftly to an alternative (likely adoption) if parents have not shown a desire to make a safe place for their kids within a year.”

In 2002, there were 34,793 children referred for investigation of child abuse and neglect in Iowa, a rate of 49.5 per 1,000 children. Of the 5,647 children exiting out-of-home care in 2002, 76 percent were reunited with their birth families. In 2003, more than 16,905 Iowa grandparents had primary responsibility for caring for their grandchildren. But the total number of individuals receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in Iowa declined from 54,381 in March 2002 to 51,713 in March 2003, a decrease of 4.9 percent.

“Iowa has 720,000 children and the huge majority of them are well cared for by proud parents,” said Munns. “By contrast, only about 5,000 children are living outside of the home because of abuse or neglect, and the great majority of those kids return home. Each year, there are about 1,000 children in the child welfare systems who cannot return home and who are adopted.”

When a child is taken, a responsible relative is at the top of the list to take that child, officials said. But sometimes there is no other family and some children have to be placed in foster homes. DHS works hard at keeping families together, and if a child is placed in foster care, they work as fast as they can to return them to their parents.

“Relatives are not only acceptable, they are desired,” said Munns. “DHS looks first to responsible family members to step forward while the primary caretakers get their acts together. About 38 percent of all children in out-of-home care are in the care of relatives.”

Drug abuse has been the main reason for children being taken away from their parents. Although Iowa has cracked down on methamphetamine labs, the percentage of child welfare cases involving parental meth use remains steady at 49 percent.

Such is the case for two Des Moines families. Both Bobbie Zenor and Michelle Turner have had drug problems in the past. They have battled addiction and lost their children, but both have gotten on the right path and have reunited with their families.

Bobbie’s story

“I was a practicing coke and crack addict,” Zenor said. “I had recently split from my children’s father and was living at my mother’s. I went out after work one day and didn’t come home for four days.”

During the next several days, her daughter Jordan had become sad and fearful of never seeing her mother again. Jordan’s teacher realized something was wrong, and they had a conversation. After hearing the facts, her teacher made the call to DHS.

“For two years, Jordan blamed herself, which was the worst thing that could happen,” Zenor said. “The kids went to foster care for two weeks, and I wasn’t allowed to see them at all. I had been a functioning addict for four years. I didn’t understand why they were messing with me; my kids were safe with my mom. Little did I know I was putting them in harm’s way.

Zenor thought about her children every day, but couldn’t keep the demons out of her head.

“When they were taken, all kinds of things were running through my head,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t deserve my kids, that I was a piece of shit. But it didn’t matter, I just kept getting high.”

She went into a treatment program for 90 days and graduated in September 2002. She then went into after-care for a year and a half. On Valentine’s Day 2003, DHS closed its case and Zenor was allowed supervised visits with her children. She got an apartment and began having her three kids, Andrew, Jordan and Christopher, stay over one night each, and all three stayed over night on weekends. Everything was going well until Zenor relapsed in 2004.

“I easily picked up the drugs again,” she said. “They are so overpowering. I completely abandoned my family again, but I made arrangements for my mom to take the kids.”

Soon after her relapse, Zenor was arrested and jailed.

“My kids were grateful when I was arrested,” she said. “They knew where I was at all times.”

Zenor blames her relapse on old playmates and bad habits.

“It’s really tough to stay clean, when relatives are involved with drugs,” she said. “You think you can be around your family, but sometimes you can’t. It made it easier to flirt with danger.”

While in jail, Zenor went through drug treatment, and when she was released, she went straight into a treatment center.

“I took everything they offered,” she said. “Parenting classes, therapy, anything they had to offer I was taking. I was determined to have a future.”

She went one year without her children.

“I was so grateful when I got them back,” she said. “When I was clean the first time, I didn’t plan on relapsing, but I did. I made mistakes, but I have chosen the right path.”

Zenor then got involved with Parent Partners, a mentoring program that seeks to provide better outcomes regarding re-abuse and reunification. The goal of the Parent Partner Program is to help birth parents be successful in completing their case plan goals. This is achieved by matching a Parent Partner with parents who are in the DHS system and have a child removed. Parent Partners are mentors who have had previous involvement with the department and have been successfully reunified with their child for at least a year. They are paid to work with DHS clients who need mentoring and support, and work with community based organizations to provide resources for the parents they are mentoring.

“It’s a great program,” Zenor said. “I think mentors are more reliable than a case worker. It’s a great way to share information with people who need it. If you don’t know what to ask for, you don’t know what is offered. I think it is a great way to give back and I’m grateful to be apart of it.”

Michelle’s story

Michelle Turner has been battling demons her whole life. She started drinking at age 9, then started smoking marijuana, and by the time she was 13, she was a full-blown alcoholic as well as being involved in a trauma at home, which “shattered her.”

“I went through a lot at a young age,” she said. “It ripped out my soul and have been searching for it ever since.”
She became an angry, rebellious teenager and ran the streets. At 15, she was hooked on crack.

“I got busted and spent nine months in jail,” Turner said. “I kicked my crack habit cold turkey, but it was tough. I remember lying on the floor sweating, in pain and vomiting.”

After being released, she was in and out of the hospital for alcohol poisoning and multiple suicide attempts.
“I cut my wrist at least 27 times and my throat three times,” she said. “I was found in a pool of blood, taken to the hospital and released three days later without being offered any help.”

She overdosed several times as well as having her stomach pumped.

“I didn’t care about anything at the time,” she said. “I was so drunk and high, I just wanted to die. But looking back at it, I just wanted someone to love me.”

She also got into self-mutilation, cutting and burning herself.

“I figured if I caused pain on the outside, I wouldn’t have to feel the pain on the inside,” Turner said.

She got married at 16 to a man who didn’t fit into her “crazy lifestyle.” But his straight ways slowed Turner down. She got pregnant with her first daughter, Raven, at age 18. She quit drinking, but once Raven was born, Turner hit the bottle again. Her second daughter, Jade, was born three years later.

“I had quit drinking, but my marriage was falling apart,” she said.

Her third child, Timmy, came two years later.

“I should have been trying to save my marriage, but I was destroying myself,” Turner said. “I had started drinking heavily again.”

She was introduced to meth at age 25 and was immediately hooked. She walked out on her kids and left her husband.

“Meth made me lose everything,” she said. “It made me physically sick. It ate at my body. I had sores in places I couldn’t even pick at.”

She went into two different treatment programs, but neither of them worked.

“Meth changes the way your mind works. It is the most evil drug out there,” Turner said. “I sold my soul to meth, everything was turned over to the drugs. It consumed my life.”

In 2000, Turner overdosed in front of her kids.

“I collapsed in the middle of the room and was foaming at the mouth,” she said. “My daughter, who was nine at the time, ran to the neighbors to call for help while my other two, who were six and four, poured water on me trying to wake me up.”

That was the last day her kids lived with her. After her overdose, the children moved in with their dad.
“No matter how much you love your kids, you’re not going to stay sober,” she said.

Turner woke up tied to a hospital bed. She fought with doctors and eventually got loose and ran from the hospital. She walked home a day after overdosing.

“I knew if I got home, I could make a call and use again,” she said.

In 2001, she met her fiancé Jaimmie Ruchti, who at the time was an active meth user. Her ex-husband allowed her to see her children in supervised visits at his mother’s house.

“I would go and visit them, but I wasn’t there mentally or physically,” she said.

The next few years, Turner and Ruchti’s meth habit began to spiral out of control. They regularly smoked meth, but when Jaimmie went to jail, Turner started using it intravenously.

“When Jaimmie got out of jail, he pulled me out of a drug house,” she said. “Our relationship was very co-dependent.”

Together they quit using meth but continued to drink, smoke marijuana and pop pills.

“I thought I was all right as long as I wasn’t using meth,” she said.

She became pregnant with her fourth child, Chevelle. Her other children were allowed to be with her every other weekend. But while everything was looking good on the outside, alcohol was causing tension between Turner and Ruchti. In 2004, a domestic situation brought DHS into the picture.

“When DHS was involved, I had a dirty drug test,” she said. “Chevelle wasn’t taken away, but I was ordered to take drug treatment class, as well as domestic abuse class.”

Things took a turn for the worse on Nov. 5, 2004, which happened to be Turner’s birthday. They went out and celebrated but returned home and another domestic situation broke out, and Ruchti was sent to prison.

“By Thanksgiving I was using meth,” Turner said. “Our relationship was so co-dependent, we put limitations on each other, and that was our reason for not using.”

At first Turner was only going to smoke on the weekends, but within a week she was back to her vein.

“I used multiple times with Chevelle in the same room,” she said. “I don’t know what went into his system. I don’t like to dwell on it.”

One situation turned even more scary. Turner locked herself and Chevelle in the bathroom, so she would know where he was at and he wouldn’t fall or hurt himself. But she shot up, passed out and woke up to see Chevelle playing with Comet.

“I was trying to keep him safe, but somebody needed to keep him safe from me,” she said.

Turner stayed under the radar because she knew how to manipulate the system. She wanted help, but couldn’t bring herself to ask for it. Then one day she showed her boss all of the track marks and asked for her help.

“She told me that she would give me 24 hours to make the call or she would do it for me,” Turner said. “That night when I laid in bed with Chevelle, I knew it was the last night I would spend with him.”

The next day DHS came, gathered some of Chevelle’s things and took him away.

“I couldn’t do anything, I just sat there listening to him scream,” she said. “But there was a piece of my heart that knew it was the right thing.”

Chevelle was taken away, and Turner said she went into hiding, continuing to drink, smoke marijuana and pop pills. She couldn’t see any of her kids. Chevelle went to a shelter for 10 days.

“He had just lost his dad in November and now he didn’t have me,” Turner said. “He had lost weight, dark circles under his eyes. I could see the fear in his face.”

Turner went to the House of Mercy, and Chevelle moved in with Turner’s father.

“My dad and I haven’t had the best relationship,” Turner said. “But I will forever be in debt to him for taking in my son.”

Turner dove head first into her treatment at House of Mercy. She was taking 50 hours of programs per week.
“I was doing everything I could to get him back,” she said.

Six weeks later, Chevelle was allowed to move into House of Mercy with his mom.

“My DHS worker didn’t agree and didn’t have much hope,” Turner said. “I don’t know if I did either. But the House of Mercy offers so much help.”

She lived there for almost 20 months completing every task, program and session she needed to. Ruchti was released in February 2006, and both have been clean and sober.

“We have been going to counseling and made some big changes in our lives,” Turner said.

Now the three of them are both living together with Turner’s older children visiting every other weekend. Ruchti is working a full time job; Turner is a student at DMACC studying human services with a 3.7 GPA and works a part time job.

“We are doing great,” Turner said. “We are living a life of recovery and making sure we do what we need to do to stay sober.”

Turner is also involved with Parent Partners, mentoring and helping every way she can.

“It’s a devastating time in a person’s life,” she said. “I’m glad I can be here to help them anyway I can.”

After everything she has been through, Turner is happy to be clean and sober these days.

“I have wronged a lot of people,” she said. “But I’m committed to continue to work at changing everyday.” CV

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