Fostering Change

JENNIFER BARRS

The Tampa Tribune

A young woman who experienced abuse and neglect in the Florida foster care system becomes an advocate for children.

CRYSTAL RIVER - Her porcelain skin and tender years seem incongruous when Ashley Marie Rhodes-Courter speaks.

And that expression, in those eyes. The color of melted chocolate, her gaze unflinching.

"Yes, I have some trust issues," this woman-child of 17 says. "I don't really reach out and love people. Oh, there are people I care about deeply. I just don't think love is a characteristic I possess any longer.

"But I'm not bitter. There has been some kind of beneficial outcome here."

How incredible her words. What could that benefit possibly be when she speaks of love already lost and trust as a feeling so foreign?

On Monday, Ashley celebrates an important anniversary, one that helps explain her world-weary perspective. Five years ago, Ashley was adopted by Gay and Phil Courter of Crystal River. She was 12, living at The Children's Home in Tampa, her 14th address since being placed in Florida's foster care system at age 3.

As novelist Gay Courter recalls, here was a young lady who had known 13 "mothers" over a decade, including the biological mother who abandoned her, a foster mother who abused her and others who pretty much "kicked her all around."

"We knew it was not going to be a human love fest right away," explains Phil Courter, an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker.

Oh, they knew she was a gifted scholar. Driven even.

Yet her 3.9 grade-point average is almost a footnote to a three-page resume groaning with awards. A rising high school senior, she has become a nationally recognized advocate for children in foster care. She travels the country speaking to legislators and child welfare organizations. She also has a book contract and is hoping for a movie deal.

Among her recent awards: first place among 3,000 entrants in a New York Times high school writing competition. Her essay described adoption day.

"I don't necessarily believe in fate or destiny," Ashley says. "But I don't think I would change anything about my life. I know it sounds bad. I had a terrible time in foster care. But I wouldn't be where I am today unless I had been through that.

"Look, I'm 17 and I have a book contract. I mean, Stephen King told me he admires my work! My life gives hope to kids in tough situations. Here's a teenager suing Florida and Jeb Bush - and winning."

Even as a child, she says, she was "prissy," fastidious about her girly-girl ways. That hasn't changed, from the pastel rainbow on her finely manicured fingernails to the low-slung pants on her hips.

In fact, by summer's end she will have earned her license as a professional nail technician. A great way to make a few bucks, she says. To buy the clothes she craves, to pay for the car she owns.

Her cell phone rings constantly. She drinks juice constantly. She certainly can talk, well, constantly. And though what she says may seem sad and weighty - "I never really had a childhood" - Ashley remains a happy high school senior with a curfew and dreams.

OK, so she met the Clintons (as a representative of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption). And she chatted with J.K. Rowling (after winning a writing competition titled "How the Harry Potter Books Have Changed My Life").

But Ashley emits a deliciously childish squeal when her parents tease her, and she rolls her eyes wildly when describing a chore she detests.

"Yeah, she still cleans the cat poop," Phil Courter says, laughing loudly.

She wants to clean up the foster care system. And she has already begun. Ashley has settled three civil lawsuits, each stemming from alleged mismanagement and neglect while in the state's custody. Each settlement brought monetary awards, but she prefers not to say how much.

One, a federal case, accused specific caseworkers of showing reckless disregard for her civil rights by ignoring complaints or falsifying documents. Another detailed the poor handling of placements in and out of Florida, in troubled homes.

More familiar, perhaps, has been Ashley's case against Marjorie and Charles Moss, whose tumble-down trailer near Plant City housed dozens of foster kids from 1992 through 1996. Even after caseworkers deemed them unfit foster parents, the Mosses were allowed to adopt seven children. It wasn't until May 2000 that the couple were arrested on 40 felony charges of child abuse and neglect.

In a deal with prosecutors that Ashley calls appalling, Marjorie Moss was sentenced to five years' probation and stripped of her ability to adopt. Felony charges were never leveled against Charles Moss.

The System

Her story, she says, illustrates how and why the foster care system must change.

Placed in the Moss home at age 7, a few months after her younger brother was sent there, Ashley says she plummeted into a maelstrom of bizarre punishment and torture. When she accidentally vomited on the floor, her head was held in the mess. Hot sauce was poured down her throat. She was forced to squat under furniture. She was forced to sleep in filth. Made to run laps. Dragged by the hair.

Food was withheld. So was use of the mobile home's bathroom. "We were beaten for anything," she says, sighing.

She lived with the Mosses for eight months. And while that may have been her worst experience, it certainly wasn't the first - or the last - to color Ashley's opinion of the system.

She and her biological mother were living out of a car in Florida when Ashley first went into foster care, in 1989. Her brother, born months premature, went into the system as a developmentally and physically delayed toddler.

Sometimes the children were assigned to homes together, sometimes not. They seemed to move endlessly, Ashley says, usually without warning, often in the middle of the night. Case files occasionally described Ashley as a troublemaker, an accusation she vehemently denies and one of the primary reasons she pushed to sue the state: to clear her name.

"One of the files Gay found doing research for the lawsuits said that when I was 4, I strangled a 2-year-old and beat up a 14-year-old," Ashley says angrily. "Look, I had the red hair, but come on. I'm 4."

Gay Courter found another remarkable fact on file. Ashley was placed in a Florida home with a man later convicted of molesting a child - at the very same time Ashley lived there.

And then there's the grandfather debacle. At 5, Ashley was sent to North Carolina to live with her mother's father, a temperamental alcoholic who had given up custody of his children. Among those put in foster care? Ashley's own mother.

Ashley was returned to Florida's foster care system after a gunfight erupted between her grandfather and his neighbors.

"So, you've got a grandfather with criminal charges. You've got the Mosses. You've got this man later convicted of child molestation. You've got other foster parents with issues of domestic violence and a mother with a police record," Gay Courter ticks off. "Where is the pool they are getting these people from?"

The Home

For years, Ashley assumed she would return to her mother's care. On infrequent visits, the woman always promised to get her back and lavished her with gifts. Ashley resented the caseworkers who warned her away from her mother. "I was her, and she was me, and this was the person I was supposed to love. No other explanation was needed."

Or given. Yet at 9, Ashley was shocked when a caseworker said her mother had relinquished parental rights. "They were like, "Oh, by the way, your mother gave you up for adoption.' "

In 1995, the youngster went to The Children's Home in Tampa, which she considered a hugely supportive environment with a supportive staff. Occasionally, Ashley says, she worried that troubled residents might steal her belongings or hurt her. But those fears were unfounded.

Ashley also continued to practice what had, by that time, become a habit: burying herself in the sanctuary of school. She was a straight-A student who could throw a mean softball. And she often kept to herself, preferring the rewards of doing well to behaving badly.

As she moved into adolescence, Ashley learned to dread so-called "adoption picnics." They had been a part of her life since entering foster care, a yearslong tradition that continues as a way to introduce families to available children.

Yet despite the often bucolic settings, "they would look us up and down like at a slave auction," says Ashley, who hopes the trend will turn to video interviews. "I can't tell you how many times people said, "Well, we'd take you but not your brother.' "

Ashley never heard from her mother while in The Children's Home and has seen her only once since. That meeting, near her 16th birthday, grew out of Gay Courter's efforts to examine her daughter's medical history. It was an awkward experience, Ashley says, punctuated by her mother's opening remarks.

"She told me on the phone, "You sound like one of those stuck-up Valley girls.' This after years of not seeing me. Then, we hugged and she cried, but I could feel the resentment," Ashley says.

"Still, in many ways, I'm sympathetic toward her. She had an abusive father, a dead mother, a drug-addicted boyfriend. She was in and out of jail. But she did not abuse me. I do not think what happened to me is her fault. I hope the best for her."

And her father? Ashley has never met him - and she isn't sure who he is.

The Adoption

In 1996, Phil Courter was navigating the couple's private plane over New Jersey when the engine failed and sent it crashing into an open field. Though no one was hurt, the emotional aftermath compelled the couple to re-valuate their lives.

In their early 50s, they had a big, empty house, grown sons and an active interest in foster care and adoption. Since 1989, Gay Courter had volunteered as a guardian ad litem in Citrus County, aiding numerous children as they made their way through the courts.

A best-selling novelist, Gay Courter published "I Speak for This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate" in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, filmmaker Phil Courter was named in 1992 to then-Gov. Lawton Chiles' Health and Human Services Board. In 1994, he won an Emmy for a documentary on children and families.

Adoption by this uniquely qualified couple failed to impress Ashley at first.

"I just figured, "Why the heck not?' " she says. "By that time I was drained of any emotion and was living on logic."

The Courters sensed her ambivalence.

"I understood that a kid who had been through so many placements didn't think this would be different," Phil Courter says. "She did have a room of her own, privacy and a few luxuries. At the time it was hard for me to understand why she wasn't happier ... but I don't think she trusted us or thought it was going to last."

But last it has. By acknowledging Ashley's keen need for independence and her unusual maturity, the Courters have seen their daughter blossom. They credit her for making their relationship work, while she applauds her parents' open-mindedness.

She still prefers "Gay" and "Phil" to "Mom" and "Dad" because "in my life, those words were so overused that titles don't mean much." Ashley's brother, meanwhile, has found a secure adoptive home in the Tampa Bay area and the pair remain close.

The Future

The latest chapters in Ashley's life are hopeful, happy ones. She recently signed a book contract with St. Martin's Press and, together, she and Gay are attempting to re-create her years of memories. She also has a Hollywood agent trying to sell the idea of a film based on her life.

And in 2004, she will enter college. Depending on the school she attends, the young woman may skip her freshman year because of advanced academic credits.

"Too often, foster homes are just a place to plop a kid ... caseworkers don't think about whether a child will thrive in that particular environment. In addition, foster kids are pretty valuable. We come with a big dollar sign over our heads," she says, referring to the per-child stipend that foster parents receive. "And with a special-needs child, they get a significant amount more.

"I think caseworkers are undertrained, underpaid and often don't realize the importance of their jobs. I'm in favor of programs such as concurrent case planning, where the child gets to stay in one place rather than continuing to move and move. And anything that provides more individualized attention is worth a shot.

"I tell kids not to give up hope. Make positive choices. Do the best despite your surroundings. But legislators are making laws for foster children. We live the lives they make. Don't you think it's beneficial to listen to what we say about what works and what doesn't?"