Part 3: A place that will not say no

» "SUFFER THE CHILDREN" SERIES: Full series | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

PART 3 OF THE SERIES:

In the same room, a plump little boy wraps his arms around Kimberly Mosteller's legs. "This one right here is very active," the child care worker says of the 20-month-old. He didn't used to be. Beaten regularly at home, when the baby boy first arrived two months ago he slept a lot, sat very still and hardly uttered a sound.

These three children are among more than 60 crammed on any given day into the Fulton County Emergency Shelter, located a few minutes south of Atlanta's gleaming glass towers. The facility is designed to house only 30 abused and neglected children, but one recent night 86 babies and children stayed here. Among them were 28 infants and babies who were stacked two and three to a crib. Older children slept on the floor on hastily made pallets.

One of 22 such shelters in Georgia, this orange-brick way station represents today's version of yesterday's orphanage. It is the dumping ground for many of Atlanta's unwanted children - a place where babies sleep on the same floor as teenage drug dealers, a place where abused and neglected children are supposed to stay for days but often spend months.

"It's out of sight, out of mind," says Richard L. McDevitt, president of the Georgia Alliance for Children. "Who's going to care?"

Since 1983, the number of children placed in emergency shelters has jumped 84 percent in Chatham, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties, according to a recent report.

Many shelters are so overcrowded they must turn needy children away. Last year the Alcove Youth Shelter, a privately run program in Monroe, Ga., served 207 children. It closed its doors to 159 because of lack of space.

"We are in a crisis situation," says Jane B. Jones, deputy director of the Cobb County Department of Family and Children Services. The county's overcrowded emergency shelter in one recent month had to turn away eight of her agency's children. "We need a place that cannot say no to us."

The Fulton County shelter doesn't say no to anyone, but it pays a price. With too few staff and not enough resources, children staying here have been dirty and infested with lice, according to Dr. Barbara Bruner, director of Grady Memorial Hospital's pediatric emergency clinic.

At times, the crowded conditions have been life-threatening.

When a 4-year-old girl recently became ill, shelter staff took her to Grady, where physicians promptly diagnosed her condition as a seizure and shipped her back with medication.

At the shelter, the little girl lay alone upstairs on a cot. "She stopped talking and was just lying there," says Sheila Nichols, one of the shelter's assistant supervisors. "We were just trying to monitor her the best way we knew how, handling some 60 kids up there, kids running all around."

In fact, the little girl's seizure had been a stroke that had left her partially paralyzed and unable to swallow. And when shelter staff neglected to give the child a dose of her medicine - in part because they could see she was having trouble swallowing and were afraid she might choke - the child had another stroke.

An 'Appalling Situation' at the Shelter

In a recent emotional outburst before the state Board of Human Resources, Dr. Bruner decried the state's largest emergency shelter as an "appalling situation," one that "should never be permitted."

"We report parents for child abuse for doing what we're doing to these children in this shelter," she said.

Wayne Stokes, the shelter's director for 10 years, agrees. "We've far exceeded the rules and regulations, but what do you do?" he says. "We shouldn't have to pack them in like this."

In Georgia, all but four of the emergency shelters for children are financed by private funds, not public. Many child advocates say the state government should chip in more, that private giving is limited. "People will give money for an animal shelter, but not for a child shelter," says Juvenile Court Judge Virgil Costley Jr. of Newton County.

Fulton County's shelter is operated mostly with county funds, making it one of the four that are publicly funded. The state contributes about $440,000, and Fulton makes up the rest of the shelter's annual $1.3 million budget. Local officials say they need a lot more.

"What has consistently been a problem in Fulton County in meeting these increasing demands has been financial support from the state so that we are not expected exclusively to rely on the local property taxpayer," says Fulton County Commission Chairman Michael Lomax.

According to state officials, the county has not asked for more funds.

Under state law, publicly funded shelters are not regulated or licensed by the state unless they ask to be. Fulton County has not made that request, either.

"I'll be honest with you," says Ralph Mitchell, director of the Fulton County Department of Family and Children Services. "We wouldn't pass."

For 10-Month-Old, Worker Becomes 'Mama' 

It's 11:00 a.m. and a daily ritual is about to begin.

Babies are lined in eight highchairs against the wall of the Fulton County shelter. Like maestros, two child care workers raise their spoons, and a feeding frenzy commences. Babies wail and flail about as the child care workers feed two and sometimes three babies at a time, shoving in food as quickly as possible. "They all want to eat at the same time," laughs Mr. Stokes, a former defensive end for the World Football League in Chicago. "It's probably one of the most hectic times there is."

It's also one of the lighter moments at the shelter, where frustrations are more frequent than levity and regimentation is more practical than one-on-one attention. It's not what anyone wants for these children and babies, who flock around a stranger wanting to touch and be touched.

"It breaks your heart," says Mr. Lomax, a frequent visitor to the shelter. "The problem has been that there really hasn't been very much public attention to these matters. We don't have a public outcry."

Ideally, child care workers want to place children like these in foster homes, not institutions. "They need a home and people to relate to," says Mr. Mitchell. "Here it's custodial, supervisory. It's not that family, and the more they're without that, the more we damage them."

But the pool of people willing to be foster parents is drying up, despite the county's offer to pay for day care as a way to recruit working couples.

"We have the money to accommodate more foster families," says Mr. Lomax. "We just don't get the community response."

At the same time, babies are beginning to swell the ranks of Fulton County's abused and neglected children - the direct result of the crack epidemic, officials say. One recent resident of the shelter was a baby boy who was picked up when police officers raided his parents' drug den. They found drug syringes in the baby's crib.

"I hate it," says Phyllis T. Williams, a child care worker. "I wish there was some way we could get rid of the drugs."

Ms. Williams is one of four full-time workers who, against a backdrop of fussing and crying, tend to the needs of as many as 28 babies at once. She has been here four years.

"It's hard, it's real hard," she says, holding a 10-month-old boy who has recently started calling her "mama." "You hate to see the children like this. Look at him. How can I give him back?"

A Plump Little Boy - and Unexplained Burns 

Ten days ago, police officers dropped off 9-month-old J.O., a plump baby boy with a wild tuft of hair on his head and burns on his right forearm, forehead, cheeks and head.

This particular day, J.O. won't eat the baby food before him or stop crying until one of the child care workers, Laura W. Parker, picks him up.

"You can hold onto me," she tells him, sitting him in her lap and offering him a plate of adult food. The infant grabs a fistful of corn bread and green beans and stuffs them into his mouth.

"This baby's not used to baby food," Ms. Parker says. "His mama probably stuck some Church's fried chicken in his mouth and went on about her business."

How J.O. got burned is not entirely clear, Mr. Stokes says. Only sketchy details were provided by the caseworkers, but they suspect he was burned with an iron. And they believe the mother's boyfriend did it.

Apparently the man had argued with the baby's mother, then taken J.O. and his 7-year-old brother someplace and abandoned them. The children were picked up by police and brought to the shelter.

As Ms. Parker examines the baby's body, she discovers what appear to be neat little pinholes in the tips of several of his fingers. A couple of the holes look infected.

"You know, the only thing I like about this job is that I don't usually come in contact with these parents," Ms. Parker says. "Because if I did, I'd be in jail."

Babies in Diapers - and Drug Dealers as Well 

This shelter, as others, was designed as a 72-hour emergency refuge for children such as J.O. But around the state, shelters are increasingly being used as more permanent placements, not only for abused and neglected children endangered by their parents, but also for mentally ill children, mentally retarded children, unruly children and criminal children.

Emergency shelters have evolved into "modern-day orphanages," says Mr. Lomax - depositories for other agencies' shortcomings. Juvenile Court judges, lacking space in detention facilities, send youths to shelters. State mental health centers, with too few options for mentally ill and retarded children, buy time by sending them to shelters.

The shelter's nursery is located on the second floor, just down the hall from the bedrooms of rowdy, troubled teenagers who occasionally bust holes in the walls or take a pipe to the light fixtures.

The babies live in a well-lit nursery where cribs and bassinets line walls that are decorated with rainbows, clowns and Big Bird. But staff say they lack basic baby equipment - playpens, baby walkers, safety gates, even toys. And this is not the environment that most people would want for their children.

Last weekend, a 16-year-old drug dealer was brought to the shelter because he needed "protection." There was a contract out on his life.

"We're not set up for that," says Mr. Stokes, who fears for the safety of the other children as well as his staff. "Drug dealers - they play for keeps. Drug dealers play by a different set of rules. They don't care if someone is a kid."

Many of the children - particularly the infants - have lived out most of their lives at the shelter, staying for months at a time. By the time one baby boy left, "I cried, Mr. Stokes cried, everybody cried, we got so attached to that baby," says Ms. Parker. "I said I would never do this again."

Jeffrey, a severely mentally retarded 15-year-old, lived at the shelter close to a year. One recent day, as Mr. Stokes climbed the stairs to the second floor, Jeffrey fluttered his hands, smiled and playfully slapped a nonplused Mr. Stokes in the face.

"You have to watch him," Mr. Stokes explains. "He doesn't do anything to the children, but he has seizures. They see him having seizures and they don't understand it, especially the smaller children. Then he masturbates and does all the things some retarded people have a tendency to do. We had three children like that at one time."

No one wants Jeffrey. His aunt can't handle him anymore. And the state says that even though it has institutions for mentally retarded people, for some reason none in Georgia is suitable for Jeffrey. (He was recently moved to an institution in Florida.)

'It Makes Me Not Sleep at Night' 

Like other shelter directors, Mr. Stokes is alarmed by the problems being laid at his doorstep and his staff's capacity to handle them.

Yesterday's orphans were often products of their parents' untimely deaths; today's shelter children are more often victims of their parents' violence or negligence. They need more than a bed and some food.

"There's so many children and not enough places for them to go," Mr. Stokes muses. "And they're so needy. If they're not traumatized by what they've gone through as far as the abuse, then they're traumatized by being taken from their homes and families."

Daily, his staff members face the traumas of 6-month-olds whose fathers have had sex with them, 3-and 4-year-olds who arrive with cigarette burns on them, children whose skin sags from near-starvation. For that they earn a starting salary of $11,000 - less than a prison guard, less than a school janitor, less than a school cafeteria worker.

"This certainly shatters the delusion that we're a society that cares for its children," Mr. McDevitt says.

Besides the heartbreak the children bring with them to the shelter, they often leave under less than ideal circumstances. Shelter directors complain that too often the courts and child protective services workers are quick to return children to the same abusive homes they were removed from.

The little 4-year-old who had the stroke at the Fulton County shelter had been brought there with her brother because their grandparents had allegedly been abusing them. After the child's second stroke, the two were simply sent home.

"Isn't that ridiculous?" says Mr. Stokes. "After all that, they were turned back to the grandparents."

Despite her close contact with children who often confide in her, Donna Lane, who directs the Gwinnett County emergency shelter, says judges rarely ask for her input into whether a child should be returned home or placed in foster care. "I have asked for that," she says. "And I have not been invited."

She recalls a 6-year-old child who arrived at the shelter with such severe bruises "that you could see the strap marks on that child." In less than three days the courts sent her home.

"It makes me not sleep at night worrying about these kids," Ms. Lane says.

'The Court Always Gives Them Back' 

Less than 30 minutes after Ms. Parker discovered the pinholes in J.O.'s fingers, the child welfare agency has called to say that the baby is being returned to his mother.

According to Mr. Stokes, police officers are hoping the woman will file criminal charges against her boyfriend. Ms. Parker and the other child care workers don't understand why the police don't go ahead and file the charges themselves.

"The mother's not going to stay away from that boyfriend," Ms. Williams says.

The women all chime in at once. "If they can get away with this, then they'll do it again," says Christine L. Oliver of J.O.'s parents. "The court always gives them back. It's like a losing battle. The parents got so many rights and the kids have none."

J.O. is calm now as he sits on Ms. Parker's lap. She's clipped his nails and put cream on the burns that have not had time to heal. He's put his arms around her neck and patted her on the head.

"You're going to leave me, baby, and then what are you going to do?" she says to him, dressing him to leave. She pulls on his red socks. "The next time it's going to be worse. This baby may not get to come back."

—Staff writer Cynthia Durcanin contributed to this article.