Journey into Darkness (28 page)

All the tips described so far will help build self-confidence in kids of all ages. If they know they have the right to keep their body parts private, if they know how to say “No” to a situation they don’t like, if they know how to call home, or how to identify a safe stranger to help them, they feel empowered and are much less vulnerable as potential victims.

You also empower them by letting them help you choose a baby-sitter. Of course, you should ask any potential babysitter for references—which you should check yourself—and watch how he or she interacts with your child, but you should also get the child’s feedback. The NCMEC advises you to ask if they like and trust the sitter. Once they’ve baby-sat your children, and after they leave, ask your child what they did while you were away and how they felt while you were gone. Ask this every time you leave your child with someone. When you’re checking out a new sitter, ask for references that include not only previous employers, but teachers, friends, neighbors, relatives, or counselors. And really ask them about the person’s qualifications. Keep a written record of the sitter’s name, home address, phone number, and driver’s license number, if they have one. If you’re meeting prospects through a baby-sitting service, find out if they run criminal background checks or any other type of screening process on their employees. Again, what we’re trying to do here is turn the odds in our favor.

These days, a lot of children spend time in day-care. If you’re looking for a day-care center for your child, go beyond taking a tour and watching your child play on-site. The NCMEC notes you may want to meet other adults who will spend time with your child, like bus drivers and janitors. Check with police and social services to see if there have been any complaints or charges brought against the center. Make sure the center is licensed and that it runs criminal background checks on employees. Finally, if you can take the time, volunteer to help out with field trips or any events they may plan so you can observe how the staff and children interact. I may be old-fashioned, but I think it’s also more than parents’ responsibility to keep children out of harm’s way. I don’t mean to minimize their role, or let them off the hook in any way, but if they give parenting everything they have, the rest of us ought to give them some assistance. I’m really
dating myself here, but when I was a kid, if I got into trouble somewhere I didn’t have to tell my mom when I got home. She already knew. The grapevine of teachers/neighbors/beat cops/concerned adults worked a lot faster than I could run or ride my bike.

I think most of us in law enforcement, and certainly any of us who’ve spent time at crime scenes where the victim is the same size and age as our kids back home, wish we could get back to the era where people looked out for each other more. Since her murder, Kitty Genovese has become something of a symbol for the way our society works—or doesn’t. Everyone says how horrible it was that so many neighbors heard her screams and no one stepped in to help her, but we do much the same thing today.

In fact, the situation is even cloudier now. If my father saw a lost child crying in a store, he wouldn’t hesitate to walk up and try to help, maybe even taking the child’s hand to comfort him. Today, people are afraid that if they approach a child they don’t know, they may be mistaken for an abductor or molester! Even if you’re hesitant, how hard is it just to keep an eye on a child from a distance while you report the kid’s situation to a store clerk or security guard? When you think about what could be at stake for the youngster, do you really have an excuse not to be a benevolent stranger? And wouldn’t you want someone to look out for your child?

Peter Banks, himself a former police officer and detective, puts it most succinctly: “There cannot be an error if you intervene in good faith.”

Society is more violent than it used to be; knives and guns have replaced fists in settling arguments. If we hear a child screaming in the apartment next door, and perhaps have seen both the child and her mother bearing suspicious bruises, we may suspect something’s not right at home. Some people would argue it’s human nature not to get involved; it’s self-preservation—what if that man next door gets angry with
me
for reporting him? But it’s got to be human nature that we protect each other—especially those who are unable to protect themselves.

Peter Banks tells a story from his days as a cop in the District of Columbia. He overheard the dispatcher answering
the phones one night giving a caller a hard time. “Why are you calling now? What do you expect us to do?”

Banks decided to look into it and learned that it was a call from a woman who’d reported a suspicious incident involving a neighbor the week before. Late one night—much later than a seven-year-old should have been up—this woman heard the little girl next door crying and moaning loudly and worried that something was the matter. But the girl lived with her grandmother and the neighbor didn’t want to cause trouble for them, so she didn’t call the police.

After a few days, the woman’s conscience was eating away at her—what if something bad was happening next door and she did nothing to help the little girl? So she called the police, who went to the apartment and found nothing apparently amiss. The telephone call Banks overheard was another call from the woman about the same incident. She knew the police hadn’t seen anything suspicious, but she was really worried about the girl.

Banks was incredulous—here someone cares enough to follow up and we’re giving her a hard time? He sent officers back out to investigate further and soon had reason to be glad he did. It turned out that this girl was born to a mother who didn’t want her. She spent her infancy in the hospital, then went into the foster care system, then went to live with her maternal grandmother, who abused her. She went back into foster care and finally ended up with her paternal grandmother—the woman she was living with at the time the concerned neighbor made the call. This grandmother was holding two jobs, working day and night to make ends meet. The night of the trouble, she came home from work at midnight and found a note from the girl’s teacher that she hadn’t done her homework. Utterly exhausted and at her wit’s end, the woman whipped her granddaughter with a jump rope. When a police official checked the child’s entire body, he found she had red marks and black-and-blue bruises on her back, buttocks, and legs, indicating the beating wasn’t an isolated incident.

Why didn’t the police who originally investigated the incident find anything? For one thing, they probably weren’t looking very hard. For another, as much as the little girl obviously didn’t want to be beaten, this may have been better to her
than other alternatives. This child had been back and forth through so many houses she could hardly even remember all the names. Here, she’s finally with a family member willing to take her in; she’s not going to let the police find out anything bad happened—they’ll take her away.

She wanted to stay with her grandmother and the grandmother was doing the best she could to make it work so she could keep the girl. Is this a bad person? Is this someone who enjoys inflicting pain on children? Of course not. She was working sixteen hours a day and basically punished the girl out of frustration. She didn’t know any other way to deal with the situation. Authorities arranged for the girl to be tutored so school wasn’t a problem anymore and got the grandmother some help, to try to build a better home and a healthier relationship for both of them. And they did well over time with intervention and counseling. But this never would have happened if the neighbor hadn’t gotten involved and stayed on the police when it looked like nothing was being done. Had she not, the child could have ended up as another statistic and certainly would not be as well-prepared to face adulthood. As Peter Banks says, if there’s a lesson to be learned from that case, it is: don’t be satisfied. If you think something bad is happening, keep calling and calling—or call other agencies until you’re convinced that someone is helping the child. And if you’re not sure you should, think again of Valerie Smelser, who was horribly mistreated, then murdered by her own mother, Wanda, and Wanda’s live-in boyfriend.

Or think of a little girl so special she overcame being born homeless and addicted to the crack cocaine her mother used all through her pregnancy. Little Elisa Izquierdo’s story is a tragedy of extremes: the love and protection of her doting, dying father, mixed with periods of brutal, hideous abuse at the hands of her disturbed mother and her mother’s vicious husband.

When Elisa was born at Woodhull Hospital in New York City in February of 1989, social workers there contacted the Child Welfare Administration to report the baby’s drugaddicted state. Her father, a cook at the homeless shelter where Elisa’s mother lived on and off, was immediately granted custody of the baby. Although he hadn’t necessarily planned to be a father at that point, Gustavo Izquierdo seemed to relish the role and took his responsibility very
seriously. He enrolled in parenting classes at the YWCA and took Elisa to the Montessori preschool at the Y from the time she turned a year old. He fixed his daughter’s hair every day, ironed dresses for her to wear, and even rented a banquet hall to celebrate when she was baptized. But Izquierdo had cancer, and after a while it was too difficult to make the payments for her schooling. Elisa was such an exceptional student that her teachers and principal stepped in, introducing her to Prince Michael of Greece, who was a patron of the school. He was so enchanted by the intelligent, lively, and beautiful little girl that he promised to pay for Elisa’s private schooling at the Brooklyn Friends School all the way through twelfth grade.

But in addition to this charmed aspect of her life, Elisa had a dark side to face. Her mother, now married and with more children by her husband, maintenance worker Carlos Lopez, fought for, and won, visitation rights. In 1990, social workers vouched for Awilda Lopez, saying she’d turned her life around: given up drugs, settled down with a good provider. Both Lopezes offered to take random drug tests. Elisa began unsupervised visits with them the next year.

From that point on, concerned adults in Elisa’s life grew worried as they saw warning signals: the girl complained to adults at school that her mother hit her and locked her in a closet; her father told a neighbor Elisa had begun having nightmares and accidents as though no longer toilet-trained; and she had cuts and bruises on her vagina, making him worry that she’d been sexually assaulted. Elisa’s principal at Montessori reported to
Time
magazine that she notified the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Services and called a hotline to report her suspicions. Elisa’s father petitioned family court to remove her mother’s visitation rights. By 1993, Gustavo Izquierdo had purchased plane tickets to his native Cuba—perhaps in a desperate effort to get his daughter away from those he was afraid would hurt her. Before he was able to make that trip, though, his cancer caught up with him. He died in May 1993.

Elisa’s mother filed for, and was granted, permanent custody of the girl following Izquierdo’s death. His cousin, Elsa Canizares, along with teachers and the principal at Montessori—even Prince Michael—fought to prevent it, but Elisa’s mother had some strong allies. Child Welfare recommended she get
custody, saying it had been keeping track of the family for over a year. Lopez’s lawyer from the Legal Aid Society had their caseworkers’ assertion that they’d visited the home and thought Elisa and her siblings would be happy living together with their mother. And Lopez had won over officials at Project Chance, a parenting program funded by the federal government to help the poor. Although she’d had setbacks, occasionally returning to drugs, Lopez also attended parenting classes and seemed to be committed to working things out.

Either because no one had the time to really check, or the Lopezes did a great job of convincing experts they were working hard to be a model family, Elisa was forced to return to an environment that was questionable at best In addition to the problems her mother had in the past her stepfather, Carlos Lopez, had a documented history of domestic violence. In early 1992, one month after Awilda Lopez gave birth to the couple’s second child, he pulled out his pocketknife and stabbed his wife seventeen times allegedly in front of Elisa during one of the child’s weekend visits. Elisa’s mother spent three days in the hospital and he served two months in prison.

Now, with five other children already in the household, resources (including patience) were already stretched to the limit. Who knows what was going on in the mind of the lonely little girl who was still trying to make sense of her heroic daddy’s death? It’s agonizing to think of how frightened she must have been to lose him and to learn that now she had to live with adults she so feared that short visits gave her nightmares.

By September of 1994, Elisa’s last place of refuge was taken from her: her mother removed her from Montessori and enrolled her in a public school. Soon, officials there reported to the deputy director of CWA in Manhattan that Elisa frequently came to school bruised and appeared to walk with difficulty. They were reportedly told there was insufficient evidence for the agency to act on the complaints Eventually, even Lopez’s allies at Project Chance feared the worst. According to
Time,
Bart O’Connor, who runs Project Chance, contacted Elisa’s CWA caseworker and was told he was “too busy” to go check it out. But over time, O’Connor, too, lost contact with the family, who avoided him and anyone else who would try to take the child away.

The day before Thanksgiving—November 22, 1995—
Awilda delivered her last, fatal beating to the child. The
New York Times
quoted Elisa’s aunt, who had a terrible phone conversation with Awilda that night. Lopez told her sister the girl wasn’t eating or drinking, hadn’t gone to the bathroom, and was “like retarded on the bed.” The next day, Lopez called a neighbor for help, who discovered the child was dead. Even then, her mother’s behavior was erratic: at first she refused to call police, then ran to the roof of the apartment, threatening to jump.