The Story of a Foster Child

This is the Cinderella story of a real foster child who floundered in the Florida Child-Care System, suffering horrendous neglect and abuse, from the age of two.

Then, at 12, her life took an unusual turn, when she was adopted by a well-to-do, couple.

Aline Mendelsohn, a writer with the 'Orlando Sentinel' in 2004, recounts her story. At the time Ashley was just 18.

This is the story of many children still lost in the turmoil and tears of the child-care system.

Lost in the Foster Care System
- She was Nobody's Child

Late at night, when she couldn't sleep in one of the many rooms that smelled and sounded strange and unfamiliar, Ashley Rhodes-Courter would wind up her music box.

Ashley treasured the box, a gift that reminded her of her mother. She couldn't take much with her as she was shuffled through the foster care system -- just what she could stuff into a black garbage bag -- but Ashley always kept the music box. She kept it away from the other foster children and the girls in the children's home, fearing they would steal her belongings. She kept it even after the state terminated her mother's parental rights.

Somehow, the spinning ballerina and the tinny music soothed her, and when she listened to it, Ashley allowed herself to dream. The sad, redheaded girl imagined living in a big house and having her own bedroom and, most of all, a mom and dad who wanted her.

Ashley wasn't a daughter. She was a ward of the state on a 10-year journey that took her to more than a dozen foster homes, a modern-day orphanage and, finally, the arms of a Crystal River couple who adopted her and helped her chart a new path.

Somewhere along her journey, Ashley found her voice, and now at 18, she tells her story over and over again, to child-welfare advocates, to congressmen, to whomever will listen. She wants to be heard.

Memories Instead of Dreams

"Imagine this for a moment," Ashley tells an audience of 3,100 at an adoption conference in Las Vegas. "You are 7 and it is your first day of school in the first grade . . . and as you get on the bus, you smile at your mom and dad as they wave to you and take one more picture. And your most pressing worry is whether or not you will get to eat lunch with your best friend."

She pauses. Then the girl in the black cocktail dress with long red hair tumbling down her back continues. It's a story she's told from Alaska to New Mexico, on the Montel Williams Show, and at a Senate reception in Washington.

"I could only imagine that scene. You see, I have none of those childhood memories. Instead, during my first day of school, I was wondering whether the foster home I left in the morning would be the same one I would sleep in that night."

Ashley's Earliest Memories are Hazy

From reading the Department of Children & Families files that chronicle her life, she knows that her biological mother was 17 when Ashley was born.

Her mother's troubled life involved convictions for theft, cocaine possession, carrying a concealed weapon. After her mother was arrested for forgery, 3-year-old Ashley was scooped up by a social worker and placed in the foster care system.

She got used to the unfamiliar, to switching schools, leaving behind friends and struggling to make new ones. She called her foster parents "mom" and "dad," because she felt they expected her to. Most of them were nice enough.

One foster mom tried to win her over with gifts, such as jelly flip-flop sandals; another embroidered Ashley a decorative sign with her name on it to hang in the room she shared with another child.

But more vivid are the memories of a Plant City home. When Ashley was 7, she spent six months there, a period that would later define her past and her future.

Marjorie and Charles Moss housed more than a dozen children at a time in their trailer. Ashley was responsible for making breakfast and feeding the infants, and if she failed to do these chores, punishment was severe. She charges that she was forced to run laps in the Florida heat and swallow hot sauce. She claims she was beaten so severely that she stayed home from school until the bruises cleared up. These allegations would later become part of a lawsuit Ashley filed against the state agency charged with protecting her.

School became Ashley's shelter. She not only craved positive reinforcement from her teachers, she trusted her teachers and confided in them.

Eventually, someone somewhere reported her complaints of abuse. Because the names of those who report child abuse are confidential, Ashley doesn't know who told authorities about her situation.

The other kids in the Moss household told DCF there was no abuse. Ashley continued to complain about the Mosses and was removed from their home.

She bounced through a few more homes and finally arrived at the Children's Home in Tampa. By then, Ashley realized that she had to take care of herself, because nobody else would. She was 10 years old.

Survive and Then Excel

At the Children's Home, Ashley dodged the influence of the angry kids around her and continued to excel in school.

Suspecting that "foster kid" was considered a synonym for delinquent, she wanted to prove that she could be just as successful as anyone else.

"I didn't want to be the stereotype," Ashley says.

Ashley stood out because of her creativity, her intelligence and her red hair. One year, she dressed as Little Orphan Annie for Halloween.

She joked that she was Little Orphan Ashley.

During Children's Home group trips, on rides through nice neighborhoods, Ashley would yell out the window, "Hey, you want a kid? Does anyone want to adopt a kid?"

Occasionally, adults would trickle through the Children's Home, touring the facility. Gay and Phil Courter, a couple in Crystal River, had two grown children and wanted to fill their empty nest. For years, Gay Courter had volunteered as a guardian ad litem, an advocate for foster children. Phil Courter, a documentary filmmaker, was working on an adoption video and heard about Ashley.

When the Courters visited the Children's Home and saw Ashley perform an I Love Lucy routine, they knew they had to meet her.

When the three met for the first time in September 1997, Ashley immediately sensed a mutual respect. The couple gave her space and didn't insist on hugging her.

And when 11-year-old Ashley first walked into the Courters' spacious Crystal River home, she thought to herself, "This is going to be a really good investment for me. This is going to get me ahead."

Ashley had learned to think like that, in terms of survival. She didn't expect a fairy-tale ending; she had learned not to expect anything. She had seen other kids leave the Children's Home only to return, rejected, and Ashley wondered if that would happen to her.

Yet when she moved in with the Courters, Ashley delighted in her new experiences. Suddenly, she could have sleepovers and use the phone and ride her bike down the street whenever she wanted and eat whenever she was hungry.

Slowly, Ashley warmed to the Courters and realized that some people could be trusted.

In July of 1998, the Courters adopted her.

Ashley decided to call her new parents "Gay" and "Phil," not Mom and Dad, because by then, those titles had lost their meaning. The Courters understood, of course, but they wanted Ashley to add their name to hers, so they could be part of her.

"When you become president, we want you to be President Rhodes-Courter," Gay Courter told her. "You're our kid."

A Window into Ashley's World

Because she switched schools so often, Ashley never had a best friend. And then she met Jenn.

Jenn Rodrick, her neighbor in Crystal River, was a year older than Ashley. The two girls would become so close that Jenn introduced Ashley to others as her sister.

One afternoon, a few months after they had met, the girls were flipping through teen magazines and listening to the radio. At the first notes of a country song, Ashley's mood changed.

Jenn was shocked. She didn't press Ashley for details. The story filtered out slowly as their friendship developed.

And everything became public knowledge in May of 2000 -- nearly seven years after Ashley left the Moss household -- when Hillsborough County police arrested Marjorie and Charles Moss on 40 felony child-abuse and neglect charges.

When the Mosses threatened the children with guns, the children reported the abuse to authorities, according to police reports.

A year after the arrest, Marjorie Moss pleaded guilty to one count of child neglect and received five years' probation. She also surrendered her parental rights to seven adopted children. Charles Moss, who was arrested but never faced formal charges, also lost his parental rights.

During the investigation, Ashley insisted on providing videotaped testimony at the police station and speaking to reporters.

Tallahassee attorney Karen Gievers filed a lawsuit against DCF in June 2002, alleging that the agency knowingly placed Ashley in the care of adults with a history of abuse and alcoholism.

The lawsuit said the department showed "reckless disregard and deliberate indifference," and violated Ashley's right to be safe. The complaint faulted DCF for leaving her in the Mosses' home, which it called a "house of horrors," and asserted that the Mosses terrorized children and subjected them to "sadistic and torturous activities."

The lawsuit was settled out of court last summer. Gievers filed another lawsuit against the Mosses in 2002, which also was settled out of court.

DCF spokesman Bill Spann says it's uncommon for a child to live with as many foster parents as Ashley did.

"Our goal is to avoid moving the child and to do everything possible to match the family to the child's needs -- and to do that once," Spann says.

But Gievers says many foster children are shuttled to multiple homes: "The department exercises total control and moves children around as if they are pieces on a game board."

In recent years, DCF has faced intense scrutiny. The most high-profile case is that of Rilya Wilson, a 5-year-old Miami girl who vanished under state care. Rilya's disappearance went unnoticed by DCF for 15 months.

Last August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared that Florida is failing to protect its children. DCF has until April 2005 to correct its problems or pay a $3.6 million fine.

Ashley's lawsuit against DCF said the department lost track of her for 10 months. It also named eight DCF employees who failed to check on her consistently.

"Children in foster care are basically held as hostages of the state," Gievers says. "Ashley reminded them that children are people, not just file folders on the desk to be ignored."

These days, Ashley is hard to ignore. Only a high school senior, she is well on her way to her goal of becoming a motivational speaker.

"She's providing the voice of experience," says Rita Soronen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. "We can talk and talk and talk about how to make things better, about what's wrong with the system, what's right with the system, but you can't underestimate the impact of her powerful voice."

Some Bruises Won't Heal

Ashley is shouting and screaming and making her face turn as red as her hair.

She is at school, practicing for an upcoming play, a modern take on Rapunzel. Her drama teacher, Catherine Tate, laughs approvingly.

When the scene ends, Ashley smiles impishly.

She is president of Crystal River High School's drama club and considers that one of her greatest achievements. She still can't believe her peers elected her.

She cherishes that recognition and other everyday, teenage aspects of her life -- spending time with friends, shopping for yet another pair of shoes to add to her Imelda Marcos-meets-Carrie Bradshaw collection.

"I have this nasty habit of buying shoes and later trying to find an outfit to match them," Ashley admits.

Next fall, Ashley will leave home for college. She has been accepted at several schools but hasn't made up her mind where to go.

Tate will miss Ashley's "infectious laugh that bubbles out of her," she says. "It's free; there's no trace of hardness to it."

There's no trace of hardness to Ashley either.

"Instead of becoming jaded and bitter," Tate says, "she sees the world as full of opportunities to make a difference."

Yet Ashley will always carry the burden of her past. Because so many people have let her down, Ashley has trouble accepting compliments. One day, when Phil Courter told her she looked nice, Ashley cried, because she didn't believe him.

"She has some stuff we can never repair," Gay Courter says, "and that makes me very sad."

The Stuff of Dreams

Thirty boxes of DCF paperwork, stamped "Confidential," sit in the Courter home.

"This," Ashley says, gesturing to the boxes, "is my life."

She is glad to have the records, because "before," she says, "I only had the bruises to prove it."

Ashley is sifting through these files to research her book, which she must finish writing by June.

Like public speaking, writing comes naturally to Ashley. Last summer she won the New York Times Magazine high-school essay competition.

When she was 14, Ashley won the national "How Harry Potter Changed My Life" contest for an essay describing the similarities between the orphan wizard's life and hers:

Once I wished I had magical powers to end my suffering, she wrote, but now I don't need any because I have everything I could have conjured up.

Ashley has parents who adore her, and a big house to live in, and even a bedroom with a giant picture window overlooking the Crystal River.

Cluttered with jewel-framed pictures, Bobblehead dolls and bottles of body spray, Ashley's room offers few reminders of her 10 years in foster care.

But tucked inside the walk-in closet is the music box. The tutu fell off the ballerina long ago, but she still spins, and the music hesitates, but it still plays.

Every now and then, Ashley will wind it up and close her eyes, and she will remember where she was. Then she will open her eyes and see where she is now.

Source: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-131451618/training-materials-lost-child.html

Ashley Rhodes-Courtier is now in her early 20's, and she is speaking up for those who have no voices. She is telling it like it is. And no one can ignore her voice.

Ashley's Own Autobiography Three Little Words: A Memoir was published in 2008.

Other Articles On Work Life Balance