A LIFE OF ABUSE, DESPERATION

What you are about to read is the personal story of Cheryl Forman as
told in open court to explain how she ended up getting caught in a car
with cocaine. She gave me permission to repeat it hoping, I guess,
that someone will learn from it.

"I grew up in an alcoholic family with a lot of chaos and a lot of
alcoholism. When I was 13 I took my first sip of alcohol and that
carried me out for the next 27 years.

"When I was 15, I met my (now) ex-husband and I was with him for 10
years. We were both addicted to cocaine and alcohol. When I was 24, I
found out I was pregnant with my daughter and through that period of
time I was abstinent from all substances until she was six months old.
That was the first time for years.

"Then I found my husband with another woman and six months after that,
I was struggling with addiction again. I was a single mother with a
six-month-old baby and out on my own. At that time I snorted coke on a
daily basis. I also smoked it with cigarettes as well as used alcohol.

"When my daughter was four years old in 1994, my ex-boyfriend came
back in the middle of the night and physically abused me to the point
that I lost my hearing, had broken bones and I was taken away
unconscious in an ambulance. My daughter witnessed the abuse. I was
deaf for six weeks in both ears and three months in one.

"At that time I was heavily into my addiction and it got even worse. I
had no control over my using. I put myself into places that ended up
being bad places to go and I was raped at knifepoint at the age of
30.

"I blamed myself for it for putting myself in that situation, where I
was in my life, what I was doing with my addiction, not looking after
my child, feeling useless and hopeless and there was nothing I could
do.

"Seven months after the rape, I found out that I was pregnant. I
thought I was sick so I went to the doctor and he told me I was
pregnant. I was 87 pounds and very sick. He told me he couldn't tell
me to keep using but if I stopped using, the baby would die. Three
weeks later I gave birth to a child. When I came to in hospital after
giving birth the authorities were all around me and said they found
severe amounts of cocaine in the baby's system.

"I was so out of it, I thought of this child as a demon. It was
created from rape and I didn't care. I went out and partied for four
more days. "I went back to the hospital and found out that indeed I
did give birth to the child. I made an effort to locate the rapist. I
knew his name and I found his family and arranged a hearing where they
adopted their grandchild. They knew of their son's actions, that he
was a violent person and they were just so happy to have their grandchild.

"The quantity of my abuse tripled. I was using a quarter ounce of
cocaine a day for a while. I just wanted to die for the next 10 years
since that rape. Then in 2003 at Christmas, my daughter was 13 years
old and she did an intervention on me. She told me how much she loved
me and she didn't want me to die."

Forman is 41 now and shows few if any signs of her past. Her daughter
and mother were there in court for her, crying. Judge Arne Silverman
was nearly in tears, as was I. If she didn't have a minor record,
Silverman wouldn't have sentenced her at all.

She says getting caught by police and jailed was the best thing to
happen to her. She was sentenced to one year probation and has been
clean for 320 days.