THE STRUGGLE FOR SAMANTHA;

HER GREATEST WISH IS TO BE PART OF A FAMILY

Palm Beach Post (Florida) February 12, 1996

Copyright 1996 Palm Beach Newspaper, Inc.

CANDY HATCHER

A little red-haired girl, given to the state of Florida 14 years ago to nurture and protect, is coming of age soon. She’d like to celebrate by ordering the state out of her life.

The girl, now a teenager with a captivating smile and three felony convictions, has a fight ahead. She and her lawyers must convince a judge the state has done such a lousy job taking care of her that it should relinquish control now or in seven weeks, when she turns 18.

It’s what the girl – Samantha – and her lawyers have sought for three years. Friday, they continued that quest by filing lawsuits in state and federal courts, seeking her release.

Samantha has been in and out of foster homes, institutions, hospitals and Palm Beach County’s detention center. She’s been beaten, neglected, sexually abused, sedated with powerful tranquilizers and sent to a psychiatric facility – even though doctors have said she is not mentally ill. She has run away countless times, leaving behind people who were supposed to help, but wouldn’t or couldn’t or didn’t know how.

Through it all, her greatest wish was to be part of a family – ever since that day she was led out of a courtroom when she was 4, away from abusive, neglectful parents, and away from two boys – a toddler who had that same red hair and a 5-year-old who shared her smile.

Samantha nearly saw her wish come true last fall, when she reunited with her brothers with help from a former teacher. But it didn’t last, and now she’s back in the detention center, a ward of the state, a chronic runaway with a criminal record. Back in shackles, without a family, waiting to be sent to her umpteenth institution.

For a few short weeks, they were a family again.

Samantha and her brothers, Ray and Charles Bishop, were reunited in the home of a Juno Beach teacher who has wanted to adopt Samantha for years.

Shannon Harmon, who taught Samantha when she was at the 45th Street Mental Health Center in West Palm Beach in 1992, had made it his goal to bring the brothers and sister together. He found Charles about six months ago, living in Tampa with a friend and working in a deli. Charles, a foster child since he was 5, had been released from HRS custody two days after he turned 18.

Charles visited Harmon in September, and shortly after that, called Samantha, whom he knew by another name because she legally changed her name when she was 11. The girl was at Montanari, a Hialeah institution for mentally handicapped children where she’d lived for 15 months. Charles introduced himself as her brother.

She thought he was lying.

”What’s your middle name?” she asked. He told her. He recounted what he remembered of their parents. He said he knew she had a scar on her face – the result of their father’s abuse. ”By the time she believed me, we had to hang up.”

Then Charles called Ray at a boys home in Jacksonville. When Charles had last seen Ray, he was little more than a baby. Ray, now 16, cried when he heard his older brother on the phone.

Within a few weeks, Samantha and Ray ran away to join Charles, whom Harmon had adopted, in Juno Beach.

The siblings’ reunion was joyous, slap-happy, ”like an explosion,” Charles recalled last week. ”We must’ve talked for three days straight.” They discovered common interests – pizza, weird movies and baggy clothes. They were learning to get along, finding jobs, saving money for a car.

They won’t say how long they were together, but on Jan. 2, police arrived at the house. Because Samantha and Ray had escaped from state institutions, police arrested Harmon on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a child and aiding in escape (prosecutors later declined to file those charges).

Police cited Samantha’s criminal record – a 1991 arson charge and two 1994 assault charges – and took her to the detention center. They took Ray, too, but because he had no criminal record, they let him go.

Ray went back to the boys home in Jacksonville.

Samantha went back to court.

Samantha’s case isn’t easy, and all the participants, however well-intentioned, have made mistakes.

Her father beat her and abused her when she was just learning to talk. Her mother had problems with alcohol and cocaine. The child became a ward of the state and was sent to a series of foster homes – a new one about every six months. She began running away, sometimes to escape abusive foster parents, sometimes because they accused her of lying.

A couple adopted the girl and gave her their last name (which is being withheld at the father’s request). But they couldn’t handle the problems of a child who had been so severely neglected and abused. After 15 months, they gave Samantha back to HRS.

The following year, when the girl was accused of helping to set fire to a foster mother’s house, HRS recommended she be sent to the 45th Street Mental Health Center. There, Samantha, who is neither mentally ill nor mentally retarded, lived with severely mentally ill children for 20 months. She was given powerful tranquilizers, which slurred her speech and made her lethargic.

Since then, Samantha has been through more foster homes, hospitals and institutions. She was convicted of waving a knife at a foster mother. And she ran away from Montanari – just before the state closed the institution described by child advocates as ”dangerous, abusive and neglectful.”

Now the state, in the form of the Department of Juvenile Justice, says Samantha must spend more time in a juvenile program because she escaped from Montanari. It wants to send her to a program at Charter Hospital, a private psychiatric facility, even though doctors say she isn’t mentally ill. Because Samantha is a delinquent, the state can keep her until she’s 19.

HRS officials say they’ve done everything they can to help Samantha. They maintain that most of the girl’s problems are of her own making – she’s manipulative, a liar and a troublemaker.

An attorney for the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities, which is overseeing placement of all the children who were in Montanari, says Samantha is astute and does not belong in either a facility like Montanari or a psychiatric hospital. But because Samantha has been committed to the state Department of Juvenile Justice, the advocacy center can do nothing but monitor the girl’s progress.

Two weeks ago, when Circuit Judge Hubert Lindsey learned of the planned move, he called all the players into court. But Lindsey, who has watched Samantha’s struggles with HRS for 2 1/2 years, said he had no authority to stop the state from sending Samantha to another institution – even if it is a psychiatric institution – as long as it’s the same type of program he ordered for her in 1994.

He showed no interest in hearing about any plan to give Samantha to Shannon Harmon, who wants to adopt Samantha and Ray.

Harmon had testified in 1994 his family would take the girl in until the state found a home for her. Then, the judge and Samantha’s lawyers were shocked to learn Harmon and his wife had just divorced, and Harmon’s credibility was blown. Samantha’s lawyers, who had argued Harmon’s home would be best for her, were unable to find a good alternative.

Friday, the lawyers, Mark Wilensky and Ed O’Hara, filed a petition, asking Lindsey to release Samantha from state custody.

They contend she spent more than 16 months in Montanari without treatment or education, merely serving time. They argue the state cannot keep her locked up indefinitely, that she has served her sentence and should be set free.

Meanwhile, Miami lawyer Karen Gievers sued the state Friday on Samantha’s behalf. Gievers, who has sued Florida many times in recent years over the treatment of Florida’s foster children, blames HRS in Palm Beach County for many of Samantha’s troubles.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court, contends HRS placed Samantha in homes and institutions where she was beaten, drugged and sexually assaulted, and that the state failed to educate her. It charges HRS officials were told of the deplorable conditions at Montanari soon after Samantha was sent there, but they neither warned the judge nor removed the girl. The suit claims HRS has retaliated against the girl for her complaints, and it asks for an unspecified amount of money for Samantha.

Samantha is no heroine, her lawyers admit, but she is a nice kid and a victim. If she has learned to survive by lying and manipulating, her advocates say, who but her parent – HRS – is to blame?

Charles has always wanted to find his brother and sister. He remembers searching for them in malls wherever he went. ”I used to look at kids with red hair and say, ‘Wait! Wait!’. Could that be Ray? Could she be Samantha?” He would ”look at kids with scars on their faces” and wonder whether he’d seen his sister.

And every six months, when social workers met to discuss his case, he’d ask the whereabouts of his siblings. Their standard replies: ”We’re working on it.” ”We’re not sure they’re ready for that.”

For awhile – when Samantha was 11 and Charles was 12 – they both lived with adoptive families around the corner from each other in Wellington, and didn’t know it. ”Never once did we meet,” Charles said.

Charles admits to a delinquent past – ”I wasn’t always a goody-goody kid” – but he got his high school equivalency diploma two months after he turned 16. Now he has a job, and plans to attend community college.

More than anything, he wants to get his brother and sister out of HRS control. He wants them in school, with a normal life. ”HRS makes people not normal.”

”I’m 18, and (Samantha’s) gonna be 18 in two months,” Charles said. ”After 14 years, you’d think they could find someone else’s life to mess up and leave ours alone.”