Smyrna mom who abandoned son: He’s coming back

The Georgia boy taken to Nebraska to take advantage of the state’s “safe haven” law is returning to metro Atlanta, according to the child’s mother.

Tysheema Brown said officials with the state Division of Family and Child Services told her late Monday that her 12-year-old son will return to Georgia this week.

Brown took the boy to Lincoln, Neb., over the weekend after deciding that her troubled son would get no more help in Georgia from schools, courts or social-service agencies.

“They’re just going to go and put him in a foster home,” Brown said, crying into the telephone. “What good is that going to do?”

With that, Brown said she had to hang up — a DFCS worker, she said, was at the door of her Smyrna apartment.

Officials in Georgia and Nebraska have been mum on the case. Dena Smith, the state Department of Human Resources spokeswoman, would not confirm if the child would be coming back to Georgia. “There’s a possibility (but) there has to be coordination between Georgia and Nebraska.”

But his mother was emphatic: Her son is coming back.

“I just broke out crying,” said Brown, who packed her sixth-grade son and 7-year-old daughter into her 2005 Chevy Friday night and drove, nonstop, to Lincoln, Neb. It’s the only state with a “safe haven” law that allows parents to drop off children as old as 17. In Georgia, the safe haven age cap is 3 days old.

There, she told administrators the short version of a long story — how she’d tried to get the child help in Georgia, but nothing had worked. She’d driven 1,000 miles to the only state with a law that would allow her to leave her son without getting into trouble herself.

“I ran out of fight. I ran out of hope,” Brown said. “I never ran out of love for my child.”

Brown said she ran out of options in Georgia, where she feared her son would wind up in juvenile detention on a theft conviction. “I just felt that after all these years, the system had failed me as a parent and my child,” she said.

Tom Rawlings, the state’s child advocate, didn’t know the specifics of the case but is confident there are programs to fit the child’s needs in metro Atlanta.

“We all know that raising a child is not easy, but it is certainly not helpful to drive 1,000 miles to abandon a child,” Rawlings said. “I think that might further anger him. I don’t think that is the solution.”

Cobb court officials, citing the child’s age and state confidentiality laws, declined comment.

But a spokesman for Cobb schools said Brown had options she chose to ignore.

Twice, Cobb school administrators offered to get the child counseling, said Jay Dillon, communications director for the Cobb County School District. Both times, he said, Brown refused. The boy also was in a “behavioral contract” program that recognized good behavior and punished bad behavior, he said.

“Obviously, we can’t take the place of a parent, but we do have resources,” he said.

Brown said she went to Nebraska to get her son enrolled in classes at Boys Town, the internationally renowned, privately funded facility that has been taking in children with needs for nearly a century. Sixteen years ago, she said, it took in a troubled runaway — herself. Enrolling her at the school “was the best thing my mother ever did for me,” she said.

‘I had to lock up stuff in my own house’

The boy was a surprise from the moment he was born. More than 12 years ago, Brown was driving to Lincoln, Neb., where she’d spent most of her life, when contractions forced her off the highway. She delivered her son in St. Louis. His father, who lives in South Carolina, was not there.

Nor was he around years later, said Brown, when reports came from school. Her son disrupted class. He sassed teachers. “He had it in his head that he can do anything he wants to do,” said Brown, a catering employee.

He also began stealing, said Brown, who moved to Georgia several years ago. “I had to lock up stuff in my own house.”

She turned to police, who took the boy to a juvenile detention facility for a visit — a scare tactic that backfired. “He came back laughing about it,” said Brown. “He’s basically fearless.”

But not his mom, who watched one bad event follow another. School administrators kicked him out of two schools in less than a year, she said. This year, police arrested her son and charged him with stealing a camera at school, said his mother.

This spring, at a juvenile court hearing on the theft charge, Brown said she begged officials to give her time to get the boy enrolled at Boys Town. Cobb County juvenile court officials declined comment.

Brown filled out an admission application, submitted it, and learned that her son had been turned down. Brown despaired. Her son, she feared, was headed to some sort of lockup.

Two weeks ago, when her mother told her about Nebraska’s law, Brown found reason to hope.

The drive took more than 15 hours. The land rose, then fell. Stars came out, then vanished in the blue of a new day. When they reached Lincoln, her son turned to her.

“Mom,” he said, “do I have to go?”

Brown looked at her son. “Yes,” she replied. “You have to go.”

Now, she said, he is coming back.