ORPHANS OF ADDICTION (pt. 1 of 2)

Children whose parents abuse drugs live daily with fear, neglect and
helplessness. Some don't survive; for those who do, the inner damage can
last a lifetime.

Ashley Bryan lies down on the dirty carpet of her dad's bedroom where she
usually sleeps. The 10yearold girl closes her eyes, clasps her hands and
raises them to her lips. Firmly, fervently, she prays. She wishes not for a
bike or Barbie like most kids her age, or to become a doctor or firefighter
some day. Every night, Ashley asks for something she believes only God can
deliver. She prays for a new father. Someone kind, someone whose lifeand
thus hersis not ruled by the demons of drug addiction and alcoholism.

"Just once, give me something good," she whispers in the darkness. "Please,
make life get better." It could not get much worse. Her clothes, along with
those of 8yearold brother Kevin Bryan, are filthy. The two go weeks
without a bath. They eat once a day, usually rice. Neglect is the norm.
Their father, Calvin Holloman, drinks Miller High Life beer for breakfast,
sometimes until he blacks out. The kitchen of their onebedroom Long Beach
apartment is used mostly for cooking or mixing the heroin and speed he and
his friends inject into their veins.

Mom has been gone for years now, Calvin says, disappearing with a man who
could finance her ravenous appetite for speed. At the age of 6, Ashley ran
away from home after her father punched her in the face. But with no place
to go, she was forced to return for more misery. The conditions that have
led Ashley to her nightly prayer ritual are, sadly, too common in the
United States, which has a higher rate of drug abuse than any other
industrialized nation.

Federal surveys show at least one in five children will spend some part of
their youth being raised by a parent who is an alcoholic or drug addict. In
Los Angeles County, 80% to 90% of child welfare cases involve substance
abuse, rates higher than virtually any other major U.S. urban area. By some
estimates, at least a quarter of all children in Los Angeles County deal at
some time with an addicted parent. It is here, inside millions of homes,
where society's most entrenched problems are born, where victimized
children grow up to victimize othersa generational cycle costing
taxpayers nearly $200 billion annually in criminal justice costs, health
care and social programs.

Blame does not rest only with the homeless crackhead or corner prostitute.
Many of America's addicts hold steady jobs, secretly stirring speed into
their morning coffee, shooting up at lunchtime in office bathroom stalls,
downing sixpacks as they watch TV after work. But no matter what their
position in life, the offspring of junkies and alcoholics are bound by a
brutal reality: To their parents, they often rank below a shot of vodka or
a rock of cocaine. These are children who live in daily dread, compiling
memories of abuse and deceit they carry into adulthood.

Memories of closed bathroom doors from which parents emerge in a stupor, of
dayslong binges that accompany every payday, of searching for mom or dad
in alleys while watching other children make their way to school. Some
never really experience childhood at all, becoming caretakers at the tender
age of 3 or 4 for stoned parents and needy siblings. They change diapers
and mix bottles for infants crying in the middle of the night when no one
else is around. They learn to cook for the family while standing on a chair
by the stove.

Once in a great while, the plight of such a life makes headlinesperhaps
when a baby starves to death after being left home alone for days by a
mother on a drug run. But for every one of those cases there are a
multitude unnoticed, a vast underground of children too ashamed to come
forward or too intimidated by parental threats to reveal the family's
secret.

Although there are laws requiring a slew of professionalsincluding
teachers, police, doctors, even photo lab techniciansto report suspected
child abuse or neglect, many don't, wrongly assuming they must have
definitive proof. What's more, studies show many people shy away from
involvement because they distrust the agencies that may ultimately gain
control of the children. "Clearly, the majority of these children are
flying under the radar and are never detected by government," says Nancy K.
Young, who heads the research group Children and Family Futures. Most, like
Ashley, suffer silently, praying for deliverance in the night.

A Swath of Destruction Through a Neighborhood Addiction stalks not only
families but entire neighborhoods, wherever opportunity and hope have been
pushed aside by poverty and instability. The lower westside of Long Beach
is such a place, just minutes from trendy Belmont Shore, the Queen Mary and
a downtown newly invigorated with upscale restaurants and theaters.
Ashley's home in Long Beach's ethnically mixed westside, which also abuts a
gritty industrial area, is a lively hub of small apartment buildings filled
with families and children.

Battered by losses in the aerospace and shipbuilding industries in the
early 1990s, the area has rebounded considerably. Still, according to
neighborhood drug counselors and educators, at least a quarter of the
area's residents are addicted to alcohol or drugs. Telltale signs abound.
Children as young as 2 or 3 wander the streets alone. Kindergartners
sometimes panhandle for food money outside grocery stores. Motherdaughter
prostitute teams walk on nearby Pacific Coast Highway. Rehab centers dot
the community's streets.

This is the world Tamika Triggs has known for three years, her entire life.

On a summer afternoon, her mother, Theodora, runs into a friend at a Long
Beach gas station who offers to share her drugs. Theodora and her daughter
follow the woman into the drenching heat of a clapboard shed. Tamika, her
sweet face framed by golden ringlets of hair, sits silently in a wicker
chair watching her 34yearold mother prepare for her daily sustenance.

Her mother's friend, Dorene McDonald, picks several rocks of cocaine out of
her belly button, then positions a milky white pebble in a pipe. As the
women alternately take hits off the small glass tube, crack smoke envelops
Tamika, who blinks sleepily in her mother's arms.

Dorene, her neck raw with needle marks, hunches over a tin plate, warming a
mixture of heroin and water in a spoon. Theodora, who is HIVpositive,
slams the solution into an arm marbled with track marks. Then, intent on
smoking the last crumbs of crack, she gently lowers her girl onto a
mattress moist with urine and semen. As mom inhales, Tamika sleeps, her
pink and white sundress absorbing the fluids of unknown grownups.

Theodora insists she loves her daughter. She holds her hand when they cross
a street. She rushes her to the emergency room when Tamika gets sick. When
they sleep in nearstrangers' homes, or with a new boyfriend, she slings
her leg over her little girl so no one can molest her.

But love for Tamika arrives in brief moments, when her mother is not zoned
out or so consumed by her body's convulsive cry for heroin that she can
think of nothing else.

"When I'm using, I'm chasing my drug. I'm not paying attention to her,"
Theodora tearfully confesses. "I hate myself every day. It's a disgusting
habit. It's a disease."

Theodorawho used to be a nurse's aide and waitress but now subsists on
welfare and food stampsassuages her guilt by pointing to children worse
off than her own. "I see drug addict moms who make me sick," she says,
referring to a friend who beat her son's head on a porcelain sink when he
accidentally spilled a spoon of heroin.

While not physically abused, Tamika, like most children of addicts, is
emotionally starved. Often, she is left alone in an apartment shared by her
mother's boyfriend of the moment, Johnny, and a changing cast of other
addicts.

One afternoon, while jumping on the bed in a filthy nightgown, Tamika
suddenly realizes her motherand everyone elsehas left. Flinging open
the front door, she cries, "Mommy! Mommy!" There is no answer. Without so
much as a goodbye, Theodora and Johnny have gone to score drugs with food
stamps he was paid with for doing some mechanical work.

Tamika passes the time alone spinning the spokes of a bicycle in the
kitchen, where she steps on shards from a broken jar. The toddler hobbles
to the sofa, sits down and digs two pieces of glass from her bleeding feet.
Not a tear is shed. Sitting by the apartment's front gate, Tamika finally
sees her mother, shuffling by in pink fuzzy slippers. After helping a
friend inject heroin into his arm, she is delivering drugs for him in
exchange for her own small hit.

"My dad's in prison," Tamika says as she waits patiently by the gate. "And
my mom is sad."

When Theodora disappears like this, Tamika fears she will be gone forever,
a fear compounded by her roustabout life. Tamika has lived in at least nine
places this year alone, including a crack den, the home of an
exboyfriend's mother, a garage, a hotel and the apartment of a druggie who
talks incessantly about putting a bullet in his brain.

"I want my own house," she tells her mother, who harbors her own fantasy of
kicking drugs and settling down. For now, it is only a pipe dream.

Late on a Sunday afternoon, Tamika hasn't eaten for 24 hours. Theodora,
pacing the apartment, is focused on her own hungerand her empty pockets.

"I gotta get some dope," she mutters, growing irritated by her daughter's
repeated pleas for food. "Tamika! Hush! God you're driving me nuts today,"
she yells. "Go play!"

Signs of withdrawal have risen to the surface. Theodora's pockmarked face
is pale and sweaty. Her nose and eyes run. Her stomach churns. Desperate,
she grabs Tamika and heads to the Lovitt Hotel, where the two stayed
earlier when she was living with another man. Theodora scours Room 20 for
money.

Lit by a bare fluorescent bulb, the room is filled with flies. There is a
sink, but no toilet. A plate of chicken leftovers and an empty can of
Magnum malt liquor are on the floor. Tamika's cotton panties are still
strung along a rope on one wall, alongside a pair of men's boxer shorts.

The closet is empty, save for a syringe and spoon stored on a tiny ledge.
Tamika begins to scribble on the sheets with a marker. Theodora, her
patience now waferthin, smacks her hard, then tells her to stop crying and
wash her face.

They leave as poor as they came.

Downstairs, at the neighboring La Colonial Market, an employee barbecues
chicken in a black kettle on the sidewalk. Tamika devours the feast with
her eyes. A trip earlier that week to a medical clinic for several infected
spider bites revealed that the girl had lost 10% of her weight in a week,
dropping to 36 pounds. Theodora sees Johnny up the street, bums a little
change, then heads to a nearby liquor store. Inside, Tamika presses her
nose against the pastry case. Her mother reaches in, grabbing two pieces of
sweet bread at 25 cents each.

Standing barefoot in the liquor store's parking lot at 5 p.m., Tamika eats
her first meal of the day. Her mother leans against a wall, complaining of
weakness.

"I really don't know what I'm doing today," she says. "It sucks." Tamika,
happy to have something in her stomach, begs: "Hold my hand, mama!"

"I don't want to hold your hand," Theodora snaps. "Leave me alone!"

As always, Tamika takes the rejection in stride, using the store's hand
railing as a monkey bar to play on. On the way home, she holds Johnny's
hand instead.

Johnny has spent more than half his 44 years in prison. After getting out
of Lompoc federal prison a few days ago, he has stayed up for three days on
speed, obsessively picking at his body. Bloody sores the size of dimes
cover much of his heavily tattooed arms, chest and face.

Tamika doesn't mind. His arms may be raw, but they often are the only ones
to reach out and hug her.

Tamika has adapted to living in a world devoid of lasting affection and
friendship. She has become her own best playmate. One afternoon, her
mother runs into a prostitute named Pumpkin on Long Beach Boulevard. "You
got any black [heroin]?" Pumpkin asks, hugging Theodora, who shakes her
head. Pumpkin, who has flowing blond hair and bad teeth, flags down a
customer, promising to return with cash.

As Theodora paces, waiting for Pumpkin's return, Tamika stands on a blue
bus bench and plays pattycake with herself. "Miss Mary Mack Mack," the
girl sings, patting her hands against the air. "All dressed in black,
black, black."

Sometimes, the 3yearold becomes a mere prop for others to duck the law or
hustle small change. At 8 one morning, another prostitute, wearing very
tight jeans, white stiletto heels and daysold makeup, arrives at the
apartment. She gives Tamika a big hug.

Theodora met her at the Lovitt Hotel. The woman, who confesses that she is
pregnant with her ninth child, offers to watch Tamika. Theodora declines.
She later explains that the last time the woman babysat, she took Tamika
onto the streets with her so police wouldn't suspect she was looking for
tricks.

Later that same week, however, Theodora exploits Tamika's charms herself.
At an hour when most kids are getting into bed, she takes her daughter's
hand, grabs a childsized plastic chair and heads for the Arco gas station.

"I don't want to go, mama," Tamika says, crying.

"I need you," her mother responds.

Theodora once again is broke, and panhandling with an adorable kid like
Tamika always works better than going it alone. Tamika is wellrehearsed
and practiced. She perches herself on the tiny pink chair near the gas
pumps, making sure customers can see her. Each time her mother shuffles up
to a car, Tamikaloud enough for all to hearasks: "Did he say yes,
Mommy?" A man in a blue van drives up. "Hi there!" Theodora says in an
overly cheerful voice. "Can I pump your gas for some change?" All he gives
her is the brushoff.

Another customer pulls in. "Mama! Ask him!" Tamika coaches. Eyeing the
youngster, he hands over a few coins. Between customers, Tamika sings
songs or plays peekaboo with herself using a church handout she found on
the pavement. By 9:10 p.m., with $1.56 in hand, Theodora buys a few loose
cigarettes and some cookies for Tamika.

The girl's sad predicament is not lost on neighbors, who sometimes try to
help. But they don't call the policeunwilling to get involved or fearful
that she might end up in an abusive foster home. Sandra, the apartment
manager where Tamika lives, notices how filthy and alone the girl is one
day. Holding out one of her own daughter's new pink Aladdin outfits, she
offers: "Wanna get all pretty and clean?" The last bathtub Tamika was in
had black mold, spiders and cold water.

"Is the bathtub dirty?" Tamika asks. Sandra assures her it is not and says
that if Tamika wades in, she will get a very special surprise. Sandra
displays an unopened pack of tiny underwear. Within minutes, Tamika,
squeaky clean for the first time in days, is proudly pulling the clothing
on. If only such touching gestures were not so fleeting. For Tamika is
about to lose the hint of stability she had found in the past few weeks:
Theodora and Johnny are splitting up.

Untethered, Theodora leaves Tamika with Johnny's neighbor, Irma Molina,
whom she has known for only two weeks. Promising to be back soon, Theodora
goes on a drug run. By the second day of her absence, Tamika begins to call
Irma "Mommy."

When Theodora returns a week later, she dumps her daughter with the mother
of an old boyfriend and disappears again. At her new home, Tamika sits in
a playroom aglow with morning light filtered through pink lace curtains.
There is a blackboard; stuffed bears and monkeys crowd the top of a
dresser. Although some in the house use crack and heroin, it is the best
place Tamika has been for months. Her 70yearold caretaker, who does not
use drugs, says she is intent on protecting the girl from the "child
stealers" and "baby snatchers"terms she uses to describe social welfare
workershoping against hope that Theodora will clean herself up.

"She promises me she will do better," says the woman with a curly blond wig
and watery eyes, puffing on budget menthol cigarettes.

As a reporter rises to leave, Tamika stands. Looking up, she asks simply:
"Are you taking me with you?"

Chaotic Childhoods Inflict Lasting Damage

Even for children exposed to drugs in utero, often born with smaller heads
or shaking uncontrollably from withdrawal symptoms, many researchers now
believe that the greatest damage occurs not in the womb but from spending
years growing up in chaotic homes with parents who remain addicted.

Sometimes, the children don't make it to adulthood. Almost all of the 2,000
cases of children who die each year in the United States from child abuse
involve drug or alcohol abuse by parents or guardians, according to Deanne
Tilton Durfee, chairwoman of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and
Neglect. More typically, the children are emotionally scarred, feeling
abandoned, neglected, unloved and helpless as they watch those dearest to
them selfdestruct. Too often, the children blame themselves.

"You think: If your mom and dad don't love you, why would someone else love
you?" says Yvette Ruiz, rehabilitation program director at Tom Redgate
Memorial Recovery Center in Long Beach. "If you can't trust your parents,
why would you trust anyone else?"

The psychological gashes are usually deepest when children are sexually or
physically abused by relatives, boyfriends or others who prey on
unsupervised childrenan all too common occurrence. "Drug dealers say, 'I
don't want you, but I want your daughter,' " says Ruiz.

At Long Beach's Woman to Woman Recovery Center, children offer testimony to
the painful images forged in their minds. Mary Harris' 11yearold son,
Juan "Johnnie" Ortega, vividly remembers that awful night a few years ago
when he was shot in the face with a BB gun on a Long Beach street corner.
He ran home, blood trickling down his left cheek. His mother, smoking
crack, wouldn't take him to the hospital. "I was waiting for my
connection," says Mary, who is now in recovery.

At age 7, Johnnie would escape to the downtown Long Beach Plaza mall.
Walking along the shiny marble aisles, he would dream about living in the
White House, or just a better home. He would pluck coins from the mall
fountain for food money and steal shoes from Payless Shoe Source.

"I dreamed that my mom was nice, not on drugs," Johnnie says, "that she
would go to the bank and pull out money and we'd buy stuff."

Now in the seventh grade, Johnnie says he was too ashamed to share his
anguish. "I didn't want my friends to know about it. I was afraid. I
thought they wouldn't like me anymore."

Such fear is a constant companion for children who watch the people
entrusted with their protectionthose whom they love mostspin out of
control.

Fear, for example, kept Brian W., a skinny, studious boy, sitting for hours
each day at the top of the stairs of his house, right outside the door of
the bathroom where his mother would shoot up 6 to 10 times a day. Each
night, Brian kept his lonely vigil, doing homework and listening intensely
to what was going on behind the door. Once, when his mother's heart
stopped, he dragged her downstairs, where a friend helped get her to the
hospital.

[continues]

Copyright Los Angeles Times