At 16, Alicia, is a victim of a lifetime of abuse and frequent hospitalizations at Butler and Bradley, her childhood stolen from her by her family, and her future filled with the promise of more hospitalizations, eventual institutionalization, or a life on the streets. It’s a story repeated thousands of times in Rhode Island. Children, victims of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, often by parents or other relatives, rebellious, suicidal, depressed, combative. They end up in hospitals and the lucky ones eventually find their way into the few programs like those at the four residential treatment facilities run by Gateway Healthcare of Johnston.
Three years later, Alicia, 19, sits at a small table in an open air room on the second floor of a group treatment facility in the woods of South County. She had come there for the interview and she reflected on what it might have been had she not been placed for two years in Gateway’s Blackstone Adolescent Counseling Center (BACC), a residential facility.
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It’s early afternoon and the eight or so youngsters, as young as six and as old as 11, are off at school, soon to return to the facility, their residence, as they go through treatment working with counselors in what has become one of Rhode Island’s most successful programs for severely troubled youngsters.
The children bring stories, most often of abuse — physical, sexual and emotional. Most have tried to escape the cycle of pain through unsuccessful suicide attempts. Most, even the youngest, have been hospitalized for treatment in places like Butler and Bradley Hospitals. Some will go home again because the courts demand it, some because it is the right place to be and others will never go home because the history of abuse is so severe, the chance for change so remote.
”I used to think I was going to end up in the IMH,” says Alicia. She spent two years in the Gateway program at BACC, after years of parental abuse, depression and hospitalization. “I never thought I’d get out of the program. Many days I didn’t see hope.
”It (BACC) was the first stable program I was in,” she says, measuring her words carefully, somewhat uncomfortable in the interview process. “Before that I was bounced around. Depression, parental abuse, many issues, a lot of emotions, many hospitalizations. BACC broke my cycle. If something didn’t work they tried something else. There was a lot of crisis intervention without hospitalizations. They taught me new methods for keeping myself safe.”
So much so that Alicia, who measures graduation from the program, along with graduation from high school, as her greatest accomplishments to date, no longer fears, no longer needs someone constantly nearby. She moved into her own apartment recently, a student at a post-secondary school where she is training to become a legal secretary. Articulate and appearing self-confident, she says her real aspirations are different, hopeful of becoming a child advocate.
Ray too is a graduate of the program, with a history of depression and combativeness, hospitalizations and an inability to relate to his mother. High school graduation is now a few months away for this 18-year-old. He has dreams that he never believed would be possible, a new found confidence and self-assurance, much of it gained through a Gateway wilderness program. He’s now determined to attend Johnson & Wales University, to prepare for a career as a chef, which eventually, he hopes will lead to his owning his own restaurant. He’s worked as a pastry chef and in a restaurant, and understands the demands, compromise and understanding that pursuit of his career will require. He had come to the treatment center for the interview.
”I used to give my mother a hard time,” says Ray, who at one point had spent 12 days in Butler Hospital. Once at BACC, he says, “I got to learn how to control my anger, to talk about my problems.”
Initially he resisted efforts to involve his mother in some sessions, but reluctance turned to acceptance, and now to an ability to “talk about our problems instead of arguing about them.”
In the wilderness program – Adventures in Learning, Ray discovered not only about the world, nature, around him but “I learned I could survive on my own.” And, counselors said, he also learned to help others.
Alicia too was in the program, where she says she “learned to have fun. I never had a chance for my childhood. And I learned not to give up.”
Both Alicia and Ray were residents in Gateways adolescent program, run at two centers for youngsters from 12 to 18-years-old. Two other centers are for children from five to 11, and the agency has just received approval for a fifth center.
Licensed by the Department of Children, Youth and Families, Gateway has been in existence for more than 10 years. Ernie Campagnone, residential program manager, said that at any one time DCYF is dealing with 9,000 to 10,000 youngsters and of those some 1,200 have been in and out of home placements.
And, says Campagnone, there are “kids on the streets we don’t even know about, hidden, getting revictimized, getting HIV.”
And it’s that population that Campagnone says is most at risk, a population often ignored by much of society.
“Things will never change for the kids in society until we change our view,” he said. “These are not throwaway kids. We have a responsibility for them.”
But funding is limited, Campagnone said. “We don’t have the resources because DCYF doesn’t have the resources.” The program is dependent upon state funding, grants, individual and corporate donations, and is currently in the midst of its annual Light of Hope Campaign, with a goal of raising more than the $25,000 it raised a year ago in funds and donations, mostly from corporations.
The contributions are only a small part of the Gateway budget, with the cost of operating just one of the residential centers in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
But it all goes toward providing hope for youngsters who otherwise would have none.
“The program doesn’t look for perfection, it looks for improvement, not perfection,” says Alicia, who just three years ago saw no hope. “There’s help out there. You can’t give up, although things might seem like they will not get better. I’m very thankful I went through the BACC program.”
