FIGHTING A MONSTER

With the help of court orders, police and a parents' support group, an
Edmonton-area mother rescues her teenage daughter from the vortex of
drug addiction

For some months, Ellen had a vague, uneasy feeling about her daughter.
It was hard to pin down. Then, on a mid-October evening, the usually
attentive 17-year-old refused to come to help when Mom was in a car
accident on city streets.

A few weeks later, Ellen took her daughter clothes-shopping for
Christmas and noticed she was nothing but skin and bones. And she was
angry all the time.

"My mind was trying to figure out what I was seeing," says Ellen,
describing the terrible events that started in late 2006.

There was another clue: The daughter (we'll call her Shawna) kept
asking for cash, $40 each time. She did it again during the Christmas
shopping expedition.

"I gave in the next day ... and then I realized what I had done. She
came home and she was out of it.

"I was distraught. It went downhill from there fast."

Like many parents, Ellen felt devastated, panicked and fearful as she
realized her teen was caught in the vortex of drug abuse. Unaware of
the extent of her daughter's addiction, she also had no idea things
would get worse -- the lies and deceptions would pile up, the danger
would grow -- before she'd finally get her daughter back.

Fortunately, Ellen found a Sherwood Park parents group, Parents
Empowering Parents, for support. She also found she had the legal
right to have her daughter sent into detox.

Accordingly, she applied under Alberta's Protection of Children
Abusing Drugs Act for a court order for five days of detox in a safe
house.

It was, she says, "a critical first step," the first of many she would
take over the following 12 months.

More than 1,500 court orders have sent hundreds of teens into five
safe houses across the province since the act was passed in 2006.

The first five-day stay had no impact on her daughter's alarming
behaviour. But it gave Mom five nights of badly needed rest, knowing
her daughter was safe.

But that quickly ended. As soon as Shawna was out, she left home,
lived on the street for a few weeks or bunked in with friends.

In spring 2007, Ellen applied again to the courts and got a new order.
Like many parents, she held onto the document to use when she thought
the right moment came.

But this time, her daughter agreed to go into detox voluntarily, if
Mom would just pay off an old debt to her drug dealer.

Ellen soon realized she'd been conned. The cash she gave her daughter
went right into a new supply of crack cocaine she used just before she
went into the safe house for a second five-day stint.

When her daughter returned home, Ellen began taking her purse to bed
with her so her daughter could not steal the cash she carried.

One evening, Ellen left her purse unguarded briefly.The ensuing scene
still haunts her.

"I came home late from work and I threw my purse on the counter. We
were going to play some cards. Then the phone rang."

Mom left the room for a brief moment to take the call. In that short
time, Shawna grabbed some cash, called her dealer on a cellphone and
headed out the door.

Ellen dropped the phone and ran after her daughter into a stormy night
just in time to see the drug dealer arrive at the curb.

"I ran out after her yelling, screaming: 'Come back, come back!' as
loud as I could.

"A van had already pulled up in front of the house and the dealer was
talking sweetly, softly from the driver's side: 'Don't worry, Shawna,
it's OK, come on over.'

"I felt like I was in a battle of good versus evil that night. It was
unbelievable."

Shawna came back into the house and announced she was just paying off
a debt to the dealer. In fact, she carried into the house a fresh
supply of drugs hidden in her mouth. "I found that out later," recalls
Ellen.

Like lots of addicts, Shawna was a master at cheating. She managed to
smuggle drugs into one stint of voluntary detox by taping packages of
crack cocaine to her body, along with a lighter. She lasted six days
in the 10-day program and left.

Then she started forging cheques on her mother's account to buy drugs,
and the paper trail quickly came back home.

That put Ellen in a place no mother ever wants to be; she turned in
her own kid to local police with the forged cheques.

It was another desperate moment for the anguished but determined
mother. "The whole time, for me, the drug was the enemy and I wasn't
going to let it win," she recalls.

Ellen couldn't believe the deterioration in her daughter over the
months they battled this monster. For a while, Mom went emotionally
numb. "Then you start to grieve for the daughter you lost," she says.

Shawna went to jail briefly after being convicted of fraud. When she
got out, Mom was ready for battle again to get her daughter into rehab.

"Basically, I backed her into a corner," she recalls. She convinced
AADAC to get her into a three-month treatment program.

Sometime during those three months, Shawna finally turned a corner and
began the difficult climb back to normal life.

"I really want to give her a lot of credit," says Ellen. "I'm really
proud of her. She's a really smart girl."

It took many things to get through this nightmare, says Ellen: wonderful
help from local
police officers, the court orders and, above all, the support of Parents
Empowering
Parents in Sherwood Park.

"I don't know where I'd be without PEP," she says.

Things are much better between mother and daughter, they both
agree.

"We have survived and others will too," says Ellen.

As for parents facing the same awful situation, Ellen recommends they
don't isolate themselves.

"Don't hide behind the door. Get some support," she says, recommending
PEP's Tuesday night meetings.