Faithwalking In Our Time

A Dreadful Knock at the Front Door Late at Night

It all began one evening when I was confronted with the kind of nightmare every parent dreads. The local police came knocking at the front door about 10:20 P.M. one evening. They were looking for an Oriental boy who had escaped from their custody. They had just picked him up on another street along with a white boy and were about to bring them in for questioning concerning a series of house burglaries and car break-ins.

The Oriental boy had given them a false name and address. He had told them that all they had to do was go to his house and his father would explain that he had been sent to the corner store to get him some cigarettes. The detectives pulled into the driveway where the

Oriental boy said he lived. When they went up the porch and knocked on the door, both boys made their break to get away. This is why the police now came to our house. They asked me if an Oriental boy, around thirteen or fourteen years old lived with us.

"Yes," I replied.

Where is he now?

Upstairs, sleeping.

Has he been home all evening?

Yes.

They asked to speak with him.

Sure. I'll go up to his room and get him now.

I went upstairs and knocked on the boy's bedroom door. No answer. I walked in. The bed was empty. He was nowhere to be found. I felt like a darn fool. Now I had to go downstairs to tell those detectives and police officers that apparently I had not known that my son was not at home.

He definitely was not in his bed sleeping, as I believed. I just couldn't understand how he had slipped past my wife and me without our seeing him go late at night. Years later I was to find out that just like Huck Finn, both boys regularly used the porch roof off their bedroom window to get over to a maple tree and climb down, coming and going from their bedroom any time of the night they wished. Their practice of leaving home late at night continued, even when they all slept in a two-story playhouse I built for them in our back yard. The police asked if I could bring the boy in the first of the week to answer some questions. I agreed that I would.

I made sure I was present with John at all times at the police station. I was flabbergasted at John's attitude toward the police when they began questioning him. He acted as if it were one big joke and smirked as they related the problems the thirty policemen had had in pursuing him and his accomplice-friend, in the dark of night, after their escape on foot. One young officer was outraged by his attitude and moved to grab John. I stepped in between them to protect my son.

In looking back now I can see what a fool my son made of me and so many others every step of the way. Everything was a game of moves and counter moves for him. Reality and the consequences of his actions in real life never seemed to take hold in his mind. As often happens in cases of deceit, he started telling lies to cover up what he had been doing. His mother and I were the only ones to realize they were among numerous signs of severe emotional immaturity.

There was his refusal to go to counseling or wrestling practice or to come straight home from Heights High School. Prior to that he had refused to remain as a student at Benedictine High School. According to my son, he would be happy if only he could attend the same high school as his inseparable buddy. His thinking was that tuition money I was paying Benedictine was due him for the work he did for me. And he decided he could better spend it buying a dirt bike for himself.

Even family summer camping had become a bust for him. He ended up playing with a Ouija board all night long and getting dead drunk with two other teens during family camp at Camp Christopher. He refused to accept counseling from his mother or father or the camp staff because camp was stupid and we were all dorks. I thought I could reach my son through various activities and with tough love. I sat him down and told him his life was in a crisis mode.

I tried to explain to him that events of the past few years indicated the need for a strong, positive approach. And part of his program would be separation from his blood-pact brother until he got his act together with schoolwork, counseling, and sports.

That talk came the evening after the police had visited our home. I wasn't able to initiate it sooner because he never came home till the next morning and my wife thought talking to him would be a waste of my time in his condition. After that session in the kitchen John went upstairs and quietly took an overdose of aspirin "in order to put an end to it all."

I called medical emergency, which rushed him to University Babies and Children's Hospital. The intake person acted rather peculiar, I thought. Not at all like the treatment I was used to during the hundreds of times my wife and I taken our eight children to our pediatrician over the preceding eighteen years.

Much later, I was to learn that the State of Ohio had ordered those treating attempted teen suicides to handle them as incidents of sexual abuse. The mass application of this mandated law without proper training is a perfect example of discharging a double-barreled shotgun in a crowded room of people in order to get a rat racing for its hole.

This questionable practice quickly spread to many parts of our country.

Our son John was transferred from the Emergency Room at University Hospital to St. Luke’s Hospital, for recovery and for six weeks of treatment in their psychiatric department.

When John was finished with his psychiatric treatment at St. Luke’s, Dr. Wolfenson, his attending physician, felt that John should be returned to his home.

When John rebelled against that professional prognosis and advice, he received the full backing of the county caseworker, Vera Perkins Hughes. It was she who decided to take John into the protective custody of the Cuyahoga County Children’s Services.

History has many warnings against totalitarian governments and the real dangers they pose for every generation. Many of us are old enough to remember why our ancestors fled tyranny in other parts of the world. We are only too aware that the impossible could happen in

America just as easily as it happened over there.

Hundreds of children are needlessly removed from families each week, says New York

University law professor Martin Guggenheim. Some will be far more seriously harmed–whether physically or psychologically- than if state officials had never heard of them. Everyone agrees that the safety and welfare of our children must be paramount. Still, experts say we can help kids who need protection and prevent families from being torn apart. Some 450,000 children live in foster care. Did they all need to be removed from their homes? Under current law, social workers have an incentive to put children in federally-funded foster-care programs because the programs that keep families intact don’t get anywhere near the same financial support.

The key is to revers