What Will Happen To The Children?

What Will Happen To The Children? -Friday, June 16, 2006-7:57 PM

What’s been going on in this city these past few months is nothing short of appalling. It started with a family of 7 being gunned down execution style in their own home followed by a family of five shot in their homes in the same neighborhood. Three men went on a killing spree. I believe they killed 4 people and wounded 8 others. Yesterday a body was dumped at the emergency room at a local hospital. In the same night a gun shot victim was dumped at the same hospital. All this makes that stupid Wal-Mart fake bomb scare pale in significance.

We’ve had 3 Amber Alerts in the last month with two of them ending in death. The first man who took his child was killed by the police with the two year old sitting next to him in the car. The child was unharmed but she watched her father shot multiple times as she sat next to him. She is so young and impressionable. This is something she will not easily forget. The second Amber Alert went well, the children were found unharmed and the perp went to jail. The latest Amber Alert didn’t go well at all. The man kidnapped his two sons from their grandmother’s house by knife point. Let me just say that if you want my kids you need something other than a knife for me to let you walk out of the house with them. Anyway though, he took them and stabbed them repeatedly then jumped into a lake with both of them. The four year old died at the scene but the two year old survived and is at Riley Hospital. I suppose I should add that the father stabbed himself too. He’s in the hospital. I care not!

What the hell are they going to tell the two year old about his big brother? And what will his life be like knowing he lived but his brother didn’t? Sometimes I think dying under those circumstances is more merciful than being spared. This child is two years old, an age where his personality is being sculpted but this awful turn of events could seriously destroy the man he could have been. He’s going to go through all of the guilt about being the one to survive. He’s going to be so angry growing up knowing it was his own father that stabbed him and his own father that stabbed his brother to death. He stabbed those children over and over again. Who does that? What happens for this little boy now and who will he grow up to be now? He could be in and out of Juvenile Hall repeatedly. He may become a passive man or a violent man, one of the extremes. Hopefully he turns out to be as balanced as possible, under the circumstances I mean.

One thing this little boy has going for him is the hospital that is caring for him. People come from all over the country to go to that hospital. They are helping him now but it is my hope that they don’t forget him. I doubt that they will because the children I once fostered were not forgotten by Riley Hospital for Children.

The two boys I fostered had 3^rd degree burns over 60% of their bodies. They were age 4 and two but at that age it was the 4^th time they had been set on fire. There were no burns on their faces at all. Their six year old sister set them on fire each time. She was horribly abused and neglected as well as the two boys. I don’t know what ever happened to her but the two boys were taken into protective custody and admitted to the hospital. They were there for so long that they became like family to the nurses. When I showed up to learn to care for the boys they scrutinized me something awful. Some of the nurses said that they didn’t think I was up to the task. I looked too young. I showed up 15 min late one day and boy did I hear about it. They loved those boys very much and they wanted them to have a good home. They wanted perfection but I didn’t have that to offer. I had a safe home and that is what those boys needed. They certainly never had one before. The last time they were burned their parents were not home. They’d left them there six months prior to this fire. The entire time I had those kids the parents were never found. One might ask why they were given back to their parents the first 3 incidents? Well, our laws were such that they gave the parents chance after chance. If you want some sort of justice for children you need to go to Kentucky cause it’s not here in Indiana. Kentucky doesn’t play when it comes to their women and children. Texas is another story. Bastards!

Anyway, while I had the boys Riley hospital continued to give care. Somehow both boys ended up not having burns on their faces but their hair was burned off. For the oldest boy Riley did something I’ve never seen before. They injected part of his scalp with some sort of solution at the site where some of the hair grew back. It swelled up really big and they stretched it over the rest of his head to give him hair. I was amazed. Heck, this is why people come from everywhere to this hospital. They even sent nurses out to the house to do physical therapy with the boys. The hospital employees sent clothing, food and toys all the time, so much so that I had to start donating some of it. I got packages from all over the states in support of these two boys. I was still getting boxes even after they were adopted by a different family. I hope they got a really good home because they so very much deserve it.

Riley didn’t forget “my” boys and I hope they take this new little boy under their wing with the same love and zeal. I have to say I loved being a mother. I miss them and think about them all the time. I'd like to know what happened to the little girl and if she was given some help or not. I'd like to know if she was blessed with a good home too. All though her past is violent (most likely due to the abuse her six year old body and mind endured and her inability to cope with it) she too deserves a good home and a chance to be someone’s beautiful daughter. I wonder what ever happened to her. I wonder how the boys feel about her.

Austin