Meth Epidemic Fueling Child Abuse
There was the baby left in the trash bag. The little girl raped after her first birthday. And the tortured 7-month-old, her tiny face pocked by cockroach and rat bites and her body riddled with bedsores so infected that doctors had to remove part of her leg.
All the incidents happened in the desert. All the parents used meth.
Much as crack cocaine fueled urban violence in the 1980s, methamphetamine is driving up reports of rural child abuse. It has added burdens to social service and law enforcement agencies already spread thin and sometimes unequipped to cope with the problem, experts say.
Social workers say they have become virtual cops. Some wear bulletproof vests and spend their days rescuing children from reeking meth labs and hollow-eyed parents, who are often so emptied of life they are capable of the most incomprehensible acts.
California produces 85% of the nation’s methamphetamines. Proposed state legislation to respond to the resulting child abuse would target seven counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Butte and Shasta.
The most recent state study found more than 1,200 children in clandestine laboratories around the state in 1999, with Los Angeles County accounting for a quarter of the cases. About 20% of the 310 meth labs uncovered in the county that year had children living in them, a proportion that is expected to double when 2000 figures are released. The epidemic is worst on the county’s fringes, where treatment centers are scarce.
“At least with the urban crack epidemic in the ‘80s they developed an infrastructure that responded to it,” said Dr. Alex Stalcup, who runs a federally funded meth research center in Concord, Calif. “Out in rural areas you can go miles before there’s a treatment option of any kind.”
Horrific tales of abuse emerge from wind-blown motels, ranches and mobile home parks, followed by the inevitable question: How could anyone do that? The cops, nurses and social workers in the Antelope and Yucca valleys and beyond know the answer. And they say they need help.
They hope the Legislature will approve a $10-million bill that would establish a five-year, multi-agency task force to place meth-exposed children in decent homes. Until recently, children found in meth labs and the homes of addicts were passed off to relatives or friends of users with little regard for their background.
“We used to call an uncle, aunt, grandpa or friend to collect the child,” said Sgt. Tony Hollins, head of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s meth lab crew in Lancaster. “What we found, though, is that they were continuing to be a victim. All we’d done was put them back in a worse situation than they were already in.”
The bill is before the Assembly. If it becomes law, its first disbursement in Los Angeles County would go to the Antelope Valley, officials said.
Funds Needed to Help Children
Jean McCandless, a veteran of the county’s Children and Family Services Department, said the money is long overdue in sparsely populated areas where meth surfaced more than a decade ago. Abuse of the drug has plateaued in those places as it makes inroads in the suburbs. But McCandless and other social workers say they have not even begun to cope with the emotional problems littered across the remote valleys.
She remembers when the drug, which can be smoked, injected or swallowed, started creeping up from Mexico. The Antelope Valley, where neighbors live far apart, was ideal for meth labs and the vile mix of fecal and ether odors they emit. Desert dwellers saw how easy it was to produce meth in as little as 24 hours, and the drug became a home-grown product.
“It just kind of started slipping in,” McCandless said, sighing. “In the mid-’80s or so, we started noticing that suddenly meth was playing a bigger role in cases.”
The cheap stimulant produces a powerful euphoria and sense of acuity that last much longer than the effects of cocaine or crack. Because “tweakers” can stay awake for days, meth is popular with truckers, students and the bleary workers who make the long-haul drives to their city jobs from the desert. From 1985 to 1994, hospital admissions for meth addicts increased by more than 450% across the state.
Janet, 39, who asked that her last name not be published, is being treated at a clinic in Acton.
“I got four kids, and meth let me get a lot done,” said Janet, whose deeply lined face makes her look much older than her age. She sat in a clinic bungalow, fidgeting. “At some point you cross over and you stop getting anything done. You open a drawer to clean and next thing you know you’re picking dirt out of the corners . . .
Meth’s initial high plunges into paranoia and rage, fed by a lack of sleep. Users become single-minded in their need to get more of the drug, losing any ability to empathize, even with their children. The situation can spiral into grotesque abuse or neglect of children desperately seeking attention.
“You’re basically not a human being anymore,” said Jackie Long, special agent with the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in Sacramento. “Up in the Merced area, a long-term user who was not under the influence at the time, took a pitchfork and stabbed two kids and killed them.”
The Antelope Valley’s wake-up call came in 1991 when five children died in the homes of meth users. Caseloads skyrocketed for bewildered social workers, who were not trained to recognize the drug’s signs.
Still, there is not a single meth treatment center in the Antelope Valley, said Paul Gaeta, an assistant administrator for children’s services in Los Angeles County. The nearest inpatient program is 20 miles away, in Acton.
“It totally changed the nature of my job,” said McCandless, a supervisor at the time. “We had to do training for worker safety, so they could at least recognize when people are high. You’re going out there alone and have no clue what you’re walking into.”
Ghosts of past cases still haunt her. There was the addict with missing teeth, who had five children by the age of 23. Her youngest died in a filthy trailer after the mother didn’t take the sick infant to the doctor. There was the woman who went on a meth binge at a friend’s trailer and crashed into a coma-like state, suffocating her infant on the couch. And the man who kept his girlfriend prisoner, repeatedly raping her and molesting her young daughters.
Violence a Side Effect
“Violence is a built-in side effect,” said Stalcup. “We’ve had alcohol and cannabis problems forever but never had a high-intensity drug that made people nuts and beat up on each other.”
Addicts can take years to clean up. But state law requires them to get straight in six to 12 months to regain custody of their children. Health care workers worry that long-term use can permanently damage a person’s ability to care for a child.
Caseworkers have seen baby bottles stored next to poisonous chemicals, infants with meth powder on their clothes and bare feet, children fed the drug to keep them on the same waking cycle as their parents, and addicts as young as 12.
“The fact that parents would do this to their kids . . . just . . . just astounds me,” said Norm Dollar, deputy director for children’s services in Victorville in San Bernardino County. “The complete lack of any kind of parental or nurturing concern for their kids. . . .”
For McCandless, hope lies in the proposed California Drug Endangered Child Protection Act. Based on a 1997 pilot program, the bill would expand the area covered by task forces that respond to methamphetamine-related problems.
The program created teams of on-call sheriff’s deputies, prosecutors and children’s services workers who rush out to lab sites to rescue children. The team here was centered in the “meth triangle” where Los Angeles County, Riverside County and San Bernardino County meet.
Before the program began, children who were found in squalid homes filled with the toxic makings of meth, syringes and loaded guns were not always considered victims. Social workers were later trained to recognize the signs of a lab: a Drano container, emptied foil sleeves of Actifed or Sudafed, denatured alcohol and beakers.
“What I’d see would make me want to get home as quickly as possible and hug my kids,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Allen Ramseyer, who was instrumental in bringing the task force to Los Angeles. “In a sentence, what this program does is save children’s lives.”
