Published Thursday, June 29, 2000, in the Miami Herald

Parents: System promised help, instead delivered harm
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
[email protected]

ANGUISHED PARENTS: Walter Dumas, 34, and Shirley Finley, 38, were told their son had to be arrested before he could be helped.

For most of his 15 years, Anthony Dumas was a fairly typical kid. He played forward on his Pompano Beach Middle School soccer team, loved to skateboard, and once caught a five-pound bass.

But when Anthony began skipping school, staying out past curfew and defying his parents, they sought help from anyone who would listen. Broward sheriff’s deputies told them Anthony would have to be arrested and brought into “the system” before he could get any real counseling, they say.

They did just that. Three weeks later, on June 12, Anthony hanged himself at the Lippman Family Center, a detention shelter at 221 NW 43rd Ct. in Oakland Park. Workers at the shelter allowed Anthony to remain hanging until police cut him down moments later. He remains in a coma, and his parents have been told he may never recover. On Wednesday, more than two weeks after the attempted suicide, three workers who did not cut Anthony down from his black leather belt were suspended from their jobs.

Now, Walter Dumas and Shirley Finley, Anthony’s parents, say they were betrayed by the very system they thought would help them.

“Our son depended on us to do the right thing, just like we depended on the system to help us do the right thing,” said Finley, 38, of Margate. “Who is going to protect the children? No one was there to protect mine.”

“The only thing we’ve got in life are our children,” said Finley. “If we can’t keep them protected in the system, we’ve got no hope.”

“We were naive parents,” Finley said.

Added Dumas: “And it cost us our son.”

Lutheran Services Florida, which operates the shelter where Anthony tried to take his life, says it will continue to investigate the incident. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice placed a moratorium Friday on new admissions to the shelter, which continues to house between eight and 10 youths, said spokeswoman Catherine Arnold.

The department’s inspector general is investigating the incident, which also has been referred to the Broward state attorney’s office’s homicide division by the Oakland Park Police for possible charges.

Following a call to the state’s child-abuse hotline, the case also was referred to the Broward Sheriff’s Office, said spokesman Kirk Englehardt. The sheriff’s Child Protective Investigations Unit “is trying to determine if there was any neglect by the shelter, or any other wrongdoing,” Englehardt said.

Unfortunately, Dumas and Finley may not be alone. Every day, children are dragged into Florida’s beleaguered juvenile justice system by well-meaning parents who are told filing criminal charges is the only way to obtain counseling or other mental health services for their troubled teens.

More than half the states, including Florida, require parents to give up custody of their children in order for them to qualify for intensive mental health services, according to a March study by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington.

“All the children who go into the juvenile justice and child welfare systems and can’t get mental health services are tremendously harmed, and their families are tremendously harmed, by the practice,” said Mary Giliberti, a senior staff attorney who helped write the study. “The consequence here [with Anthony] is extreme.”

Howard Finkelstein, chief assistant of the Broward Public Defender’s Office and a mental-health advocate, said he confronts families daily who were encouraged to file charges against their children in order to get help.

“When law enforcement tells parents they have to have their kid arrested in order to access treatment, that unfortunately is the truth,” Finkelstein said. “…the shameful truth.

“The system needs to be devised so that you can walk in the front door, not walk in handcuffs through the back door,” he added.

“Parents are screaming for help,” said Mindy Solomon, who supervises the public defender’s juvenile division, which represents the vast majority of children arrested in Broward. “But they’re just getting doors slammed in their face regularly.

“It is not unusual for parents to end up in the delinquency system after they’ve searched for help,” said Solomon. “It’s tragic, just incredibly tragic.”

Dumas and Finley, who share custody of three children following a divorce three years ago, say they have no clue as to why Anthony became more and more rebellious in recent months. He was a “normal everyday teenager,” his father said, who loved to play with computers, go to the beach and listen to contemporary music.

Anthony’s parents aren’t wealthy; Dumas, 34, of Pompano Beach, builds custom-made furniture and Finley is an air-conditioning technician. Neither could afford to insure their son or pay thousands of dollars for private therapy.

They sought help from school counselors, crisis centers, youth groups and even a summer camp for troubled teens, they say, but were sent away at every turn. Finally, a BSO officer told them to file charges against Anthony the next time he acted up.

“They asked us, `Does he have a record?’ ” said Finley. “We said no. `Then there’s no way we can help you,’ ” the family was told.

“All we were trying to do is keep him off the streets,” said Finley. “These teenagers need help, and we had nowhere to go.”

Anthony was arrested on a domestic violence charge following an altercation with his mother. At a hearing before Circuit Judge Dorian Damoorgian, “they asked me if I would take him home,” Dumas said. `I said that would not fix what’s wrong with him.”

Damoorgian ordered the boy to reside at the Lippman Family Center shelter, where he could get counseling. Anthony arrived on May 23.

“After he got in the system, we were the ones in handcuffs,” Dumas said. “We had no say over what happened.”

Dumas said his son appeared to be improving. He took more interest in school work, made friends with his peers, and became a favorite of Lippman shelter workers. When Dumas talked with Anthony the night of June 12, Anthony seemed excited at the prospect of returning home.

His parents were stunned when shelter workers told them Anthony had hanged himself, and Finley still is skeptical of the official account.

They were outraged when police told them three different shelter workers had allowed Anthony to remain hanging before police arrived to finally cut him down. One employee, identified in a report as Sandra Trotter, took between four and six Polaroid pictures of the boy while he was still tied to a top bunk, the family was told.

“She had to look for that camera,” Finley said. “Do you know how long it takes a Polaroid camera to work?”

Englehardt, the BSO spokesman, said he simply doesn’t know whether BSO deputies advised Dumas and Finley to file charges against their son. He also said he does not know whether the advice had been offered to parents in the past.

“We’re not aware that anybody at the Broward Sheriff’s Office made that suggestion,” he said.

And state social service officials insist there are free or reduced-price services available to families trying to cope with a troubled teen.

“It is ridiculous to say that a child needs to be arrested in order to get mental health care,” said Page Jolly, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families.

Many families have sought help through a state program called Children in Need of Services, which provides counseling and crisis intervention for families struggling with defiant teens, said Diane Hirth, a juvenile justice spokeswoman. In fact, the Lippman Center is under contract to offer counseling under the CINS program.

Anthony’s family “could have accessed services without any criminal charges,” said Hirth, whose department did not identify the boy.

Families coping with a rebellious child can be referred to a counseling program by calling the state’s Parent Hotline at 1-888-41FAMILY.

Dumas and Finley say it is too late to help their son, who underwent surgery Wednesday to improve his breathing. He has been running a fever, suffering muscle contractures, and doctors fear his vital organs are under extreme stress.

“They trusted,” said the family’s lawyer, David Fuchs of Fort Lauderdale. “They won’t trust again.”

Said Dumas: “If this can happen to us, a normal middle-class family, it can happen to anybody.”