For The Love of Ivory

How The Foster System Hides Child Killers As Caregivers

Another haunting case I became involved with as a crisis responder, then later as a foster carer, was that of a little girl they said was too dangerous and unmanageable for anybody to handle alone.

I was called in to watch a seven-year-old girl who was living in a hotel after her assigned foster parent had given her back to the social worker, claiming she was too difficult to keep. Well, sort of. But the details of how she wound up in the hotel, my house, or my heart don’t matter right now. They’ll all come out in due time. For now, just accept that I took the call.

We regularly had shifts that were essentially babysitting unplaceable children and youth who lived in area motel and hotel rooms with revolving one-on-one or two-on-one staff working up to 24 hours at a time.

Generally, we’d take them out to eat, go to the movies, or hang out watching TV in their rooms, and sometimes sleeping over. I rarely slept on shifts. Many of the cases involved children who were violent—suicidal or homicidal, requiring close round-the-clock supervision.

This little girl and I got acquainted when I picked her up from her school.

“Hi there. I’m Nicole and I’ll be hanging out with you tonight. How was school today?” I asked as we walked from the building to my car.

“Good!” she said, and continued: “I have to get valentines cards for my class exchange tomorrow,” and handed me a paper with instructions about what candies were allowed and not allowed.

“Right on,” I said. “There’s a Shoppers Drug Mart right up the street from the hotel we can go to. How’s Wendy’s for dinner?”

“Cool!” she said. So we drove back to the hotel, parked the car, then walked the couple of blocks to Wendy’s, hitting up the store on our way “home.”

They didn’t have a huge selection of valentines cards, but there were a couple that met the peanut-free requirement of her school.

I found it odd that children were expected to manage the ingredients of what was brought into the classroom with them, rather than the child with allergies being expected to discern how to manage his own issues like was done when I was a child. But hey, I was only a crisis responder.

She picked out Dora the Explorer cards that had red heart lollipops attached and clearly stated “Peanut Free” on the box. Done.

Off we went back to the hotel where she wrote them out for each of her classmates according to the list, telling me how she felt about each of them as she did.

The next day, I dropped her back at school after a “continental breakfast” from the hotel lobby before heading home for a nap.

Later, I was asked to pick her up from school and not bring her back. I went into the classroom where the principal handed me a paper informing me that the little girl was suspended for supposedly “intentionally trying to hurt” a little boy “by giving him a peanut candy, knowing that he was allergic to peanuts and could die.”

What?!?

First of all, I personally bought her valentines candy that absolutely did not have peanut ingredients. Instead, it had corn syrup, red dye, and other frankly dangerous ingredients—all apparently permissible by school standards.

Secondly, that seemed like an extreme consequence and an extreme accusation to me.

I informed the principal that the candy I bought did not have peanuts. He told me that she received a peanut candy from another student whose parents did not heed the peanut-free warning, and that “my” little girl knowingly gave her candy to the boy to hurt him, because she had a crush on him and he didn’t like her in that way.

My brain nearly exploded as my eyes clung to their sockets. How could this be really happening?

I questioned her about it as she sat there, sullen.

“Is this true?”

“No!” she exclaimed, tears nearly streaming from her eyes as her face reddened and she clenched her fists to respond, holding back her explosion.

“He’s my friend! Why would I want to hurt him?!”

To which the principal replied in a fashion that made it clear to me that we needed to leave.

I took the suspension paper and the child and left the school. We talked it out on the drive back to the hotel and hit up Boston Pizza for dinner on the way.

When my relief arrived the next morning, I recommended an educational outing to replace school, rather than sitting around watching television all day—which is often what happens to children in these types of living situations.

Who knows what happened though.

There was something about that little girl that I just got. I liked her. She had gumption.

Hers was one of the last cases I worked in that role.

I had recently received my license to open my own therapeutic resource home for teen girls, specifically to prepare them for independent living and aging out of the foster system. I picked up the shift while awaiting my first placement.

I spoke with my resource worker—the social worker assigned to manage placements—and told him about this little girl.

“Gary, I know she’s in the Under Twelve stack, but this kid’s living in a hotel with round-the-clock staffing. She’s unplaceable. If there’s any chance they send her file up to your team, I want her.”

He said, “Nicole, we didn’t license you to take care of little kids. We’re paying you to provide therapeutic level care to teenagers.”

I said, “I know. I’m just letting you know that this file exists and the ministry is paying an outside agency much more to put this kid up in a hotel. Just keep me in mind if her name comes up in your meetings, please.”

Sure enough, not long after that he called me.

“Remember that little girl you asked me about?”

“Send her over,” I said.

“Well, you might want to reconsider. I’m looking at her file and…”

I cut him off. “I don’t care what it says. Send her over.”

By that point, I already had one placement in my two-bed resource: a thirteen-year-old girl with extremely high behavioral needs, who I’d worked with during my street outreach work.

She constantly ran away from foster and group homes, was heavily drug-involved, and had been in more than one dozen placements in the six years since her mother stuck her head in the oven and committed suicide.

When I got my license, word spread and she had specifically asked for me because I’m “cool”—though not in the way most street kids expect.

Cool workers and resource providers are usually very informal and approachable with the kids, though often they’re the ones who don’t care what the kids do or actively engage in nefarious activities. That’s never been me. I’m cool because I tell it like it is, I don’t judge, and I meet clients where they’re at rather than expecting them to adapt to me. That said, I’m also a hard-ass because I recognize potential and believe in their ability to rise to it with proper support.

Getting “the little one,” as I’d call her, meant additional safety measures had to be instituted. It was uncommon for “under 12s” and “over 12s” to share a resource, but this was a special circumstance.

Lightning strikes and streetcar cables break. What does it all mean?

Fender benders and full-on T-bones. How do you think it all really works?

Emotion. Vibration. Collision. Alignment.

Ever seen Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow? I highly recommend it.

Actors, Directors, Choreographers, Producers, and Writers collaborate in getting their collective messages from divine knowing to you. It takes years for most. Some, it takes lifetimes.

The message isn’t meant to be felt so you can brag about it! It’s meant to be felt as a sign that it’s time for you to wake up.

You’d better start aspiring to be able to do the dirty jobs!

This is what Alien vs. Predator really is, mi hijo—who’s prey, who’s predator, and who’s profiting off the spectacle.

Blue collar.

White collar.

Black collar.

Orange collar.

Why do cops call their catches “collars”?

Who would refer to people by animal names?

What does each slur really represent?

Who likes to keep pets?

Which, why, and how?

Why are they calling us “companion” animals?

Who is comfortable with screaming and being locked in cages?

Who’s ready to start touring slaughterhouses and wastewater processing sites?

There’s a reason I went through cadaver lab in college.

There’s a reason I went on ride-alongs as a kid.

There’s a reason I enlisted in the Army.

And once God felt I had enough knowledge of anything to move forward, He broke my fairytales down.

I always knew.

Do you?