Hello DMC. I really loved the video.
I was born on July 11, 1971 in Chicago, Illinois. My bio mother and father weren't married and she kept the pregnancy hidden. My Grandfather never knew I even existed.
My mother moved to Iowa and had become neighbors with and elderly couple who were also foster parents. Honestly, how they ever became foster parents is beyond me.
I spent my child hood with these sadistic people on through my teen years. In 2nd grade I began thinking about suicide because the abuse was so bad. I tried to tell the school and all they did was call my parents and I got beat when I got home. My father raped me for years. He even killed my kittens while having me in a head lock and making me watch. He literally ripped their poor bodies apart. I still have nightmares and guilt. I take in every stray cat I come across but then I live on a farm with a lot of land for them to frolick in.
Age 9 I had a nervous break down.
They were both alcoholics.
By age 11 I tried to commit suicide. I was hospitalized in a mental health institute and then sent back to this abusive environment. I told social workers, the mental health counselors the whole story. No one seemed to care. I began running away, not because I was this bad kid they all made me out to be, but to protect myself. The streets were safer than my home life.
My parents finally separated but my father would get drunk and come to our home and the abuse would continue. Police would make him leave only he would return a few days later.
I ran away to stay with a friend and they became my foster parents for a while. But her boyfriend was also abusive. My father died while I was in that foster home. My adoptive mother was at this point age 76 was frail from cancer and weighed about 96 lbs. DHS put me back in my mother's home again. She was sick with cancer and bed ridden by now.
I took care of her by myself while trying to go to school. It was horrible. I would come down the stairs every morning slowly trying to see if her chest was moving. My heart would race because i was so afraid to find her dead. All I could think about was having to go home and the possibility of finding her dead. I couldn't concentrate in school. My grades were terrible. I was full of guilt.
My attorney tried to adopt me. The judge told him that it was a conflict of interest and he would have to sign off of my case first. He did this and DHS said that I was too much of a problem child for him to adopt because he also had twins on the way. So the judge denied him adopting me.
I ended up in another foster home. We were just simple cheap labor for this foster family. I lost 40 lbs in less than a month. We were nothing more than dogs. I ran away from there when my new social worker wouldn't do anything. I ended up in the Iowa Juvenile Home. Not long after I was there, another girl ended up in the Iowa Juvenile Home who had been at that foster home. Her story was the same. I did well in the Iowa Juvenile Home. I was not a bad kid. I did as I was told and made weeks very quickly. I never got into drugs or alcohol. I never ran with the bad crowd. My mother died while I was in there. I was lost in what I was going to do. I got my GED.
I was sent to a program for independent living. I ended up running away from there. I had a job and went to school. I kept to myself. I ended up back in the Iowa Juvenile Home again. At least I was safe there. Staff for the most part were pretty nice. The staff that had issues would get terminated right away. I still keep in contact with them. On my second trip to the Iowa Juvenile Home, my counselor Colleen whom I love dearly, said she was surprised that I didn't take the thousand dollars they sent me for clothes while I was in the independent living program and disappear forever. I never received that money. Come to find out when Iowa Juvenile investigated, my social worker had cashed the check and took the money. Yet she was promoted in her job! I never got my thousand dollars which was money left to me from my mother and father after they had died because my father was military and because I was a minor in the system, that money went into an escro account. I was supposed to get 20,000.00 when I became 18. The worker in charge of that account had split it up into different banks for an unknown reason and when I turned 18 I had to fight to get my money. I only got 10,000.00 and it is unknown where the rest went.
I was put into another foster home in Waterloo, Iowa. I was now almost 16 years old. Another abusive home. I ran again and called Iowa Juvenile Home crying. They tried to take me back but were not allowed to. I was kicked from the system. Never actually legally emancipated. No home, no money, nowhere to go. I hitch hiked from Waterloo to Cedar Rapids and stayed with a friend there who owned a quilting business. I got a job and paid my way while I lived there. I also learned to sew and quilt. I owe those people so much gratitude.
Some kids are lucky enough to find good homes to live in. But so many in foster care end up dead at the hands of their care takers and CPS just turns a blind eye and doesn't take responsibility. I have no faith in CPS. I lived years of torment because they didn't care. Now, I sit and watch as my fiance's children are enduring the same that I endured, in their mother's home in Missouri with CPS turning a blind eye yet 3,000 pages plus of their reports full of abuse of those kids. I don't know what is wrong with society these days but the court system is so broken and no one wants to really look at why.
I have two boys now, ages 15 and 16. They are my best friends. I love them more than anything in this world. My fiance's daughter keeps sending us e mails about the abuse in her home and is talking about running away. My fiance has tried to protect them since 2001 to no avail. Because we can't afford huge retainer fees for an attorney, they are suffering. Looking at their situation is for me, like looking into a mirror. It's almost unbearable at times. We have been to every group, agency etc...and no one wants to see the documents because they simply don't care. They are cold and callous to these children.
Sincerely,
Jennifer
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