A Parent’s Love Holds Steadfast When Drugs Have Taken All Else

“Though I am undeserving of your love, you have always gone out of your way to let me know you love and care about me. I know I have turned out to be a disappointment to you, but God willing, I will change this in the near future. I am really not a bad person, I have nothing but love and compassion in my heart, so why do I do the things I do?”

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They’ve kicked him out of the house. They’ve ordered him to sleep in the garage and in the streets. They turned him in when he stole from them to buy drugs. But one thing Philip and Roberta Roberts have never done is given up on their son, Scott, now 34.

Nor have they ever called him a criminal.

In the office of his Villa Park home, Philip Roberts hands me a sheaf of recent letters Scott has written, part of the correspondence over the years from places like Donovan, Wasco, Tehachapi, Chino, Shafter. Californians will recognize that these places are not vacation resorts.

Scott Roberts has been in and out of incarceration since at least 1984, his father says. He’s in again, this time for 16 months for drug possession and violating parole. He’s in a minimum-security facility, having just been transferred after a few months in a high-security cellblock.

Philip Roberts thinks the state of California has punished his son enough.

Some of you may think the 61-year-old Roberts, a recently retired co-owner of a manufacturing company, is in denial. I think not, given that he has openly discussed his son’s drug history with fellow Elks Club members and various friends and neighbors. What he’s concluded is that his son is a troubled victim of his own excesses--but not someone who should be locked up in prison. And he’s discovered that drug problems--among his own friends’ families, on his own block--are more pronounced than he realized.

“What really inflames me,” Roberts says, “is that the federal government sits by making a big deal out of cocaine and heroin, and they know where it’s coming from. We’ll go over and interfere in the Middle East problem, yet we’ve got a problem right here at home and we won’t stop where the drugs are coming from.”

I can almost hear the screams from deep inside Roberts. They’re angry, frustrated cries because he knows society largely disdains people like his son, thinking that prison is what Scott deserves.

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“It has been said that we can overcome difficulties slowly but steadily, like water wearing a path through stone. It may take me a while to resolve my problems, but I believe in me, and I know I can do it, if I take it day by day.”

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“If he were someone like a murderer, or a hard-core criminal, I would have a different outlook on him,” Roberts says of his son. “But I believe drugs have control of his mind and body. . . . Putting him back in prison has never accomplished anything.”

Like many Americans forced to study the drug problem because of a family problem, Roberts has concluded punishment has a proper but limited value. In essence, Roberts believes, his son is ill.

In its 33 prisons, the state of California houses 157,000 inmates. Beyond that, says state Corrections Department spokeswoman Kati Corsaut, it supervises 107,000 parolees. Although the state hasn’t done its own study, Corsaut says, it has no reason to argue with a recent nationwide study indicating that drugs or alcohol played a part in the crimes of as many as 80% of the inmates.

Most of the state’s prisons rely solely on either Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous to help inmates. However, Corsaut says, a more sophisticated treatment program at the Donovan Correctional Facility shows promise, as does a 1,000-bed treatment program at Corcoran State Prison. She says the state is “in the process of trying to establish smaller versions of this at other prisons.”

Roberts isn’t certain that any given program will end his son’s drug abuse. Even Scott, in his letters, acknowledges personal problems that go beyond his reliance on drugs.

“We brought him up since he was a baby,” Philip Roberts says. “We just never saw anything bad in him as an individual. In fact, even in rehab he’s gone out of his way to help others worse off than he is.”

Someday, perhaps far, far off in the distance, society will look at the tens of thousands of inmates like Scott Roberts and see the troubled souls that his father sees:

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“Dear Dad: I am not worried about my addictions. I will never forget they are there nor will I take them lightly, but they have taken all I will allow them to take from me, which is far too much already. The only things they have taken from me that are irretrievable are the good memories that I should have had and time, which I now know are the two most precious things in life. . . . You have gone way beyond your call of duty as a parent and I will never forget. I only wish I had offered you more as a son.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com