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Roberts too was once a lost youngster. He fell into the court system 11 years ago, accused of malicious destruction. He was already a neglected and abused child, a runaway and a truant. His mother wanted to kick him out of her home when he was 10 years old. At 15 he fractured a kid's skull with a brick for teasing him and was later arrested for arson. Psychologists claimed he suffered from neurological dysfunction, attention-deficit disorder and poor impulse control. For a time, Ritalin, an antihyperactivity drug, helped. But two years ago, he was arrested for assault, and in 1991 he was busted for possession of cocaine and joyriding.
As Donnell is handcuffed and led out the courtroom door, his mother is asked if she would like to talk to him. "I ain't got nothin' much to say," she mutters, turning away. Her son does not look at her as he walks out.
Antwan's case is one of 1,070 hearings that moved through the court in this single week. Last year juvenile court accounted for 61% of all Eighth Circuit Court hearings. Moving cases through the gridlocked court is often more important than dispensing justice. In 1991 about 14,000 new cases were filed, or 20% more than five years ago. Delinquency cases jumped 15%, while abuse and neglect cases soared 40%.
Emily
Nearly 80% of juvenile-court work involves youthful offenders like Antwan. The rest focuses on abused and neglected children. Perhaps the most tragic case to pass through Baltimore's juvenile court this week involved Emily Travis, 6. Several months earlier, Emily had told two department-of-social- services workers that her father sexually abused both her and her sister Tracy, 10, in the bedroom while their mother cooked dinner. Since then, Emily has been in a foster home. The court hopes to find a permanent place for her.
Clinging to a doll that plays It's a Small World, Emily walks into the court's waiting room, a windowless place, where children play with a well-worn set of plastic blocks. This is not her first visit. Three years ago, high levels of lead were found in Emily's blood; her parents resisted health- department efforts to rid their home of the toxic metal. Court papers described the home as filthy, unsanitary and insect infested.
Apparently little has changed since then. Lawyers in Master Bright Walker's courtroom pass around recent photographs of the same house. The photos display insects crawling in a bowl of soup; trash containers overflowing; food spoiling on a table; bare, broken mattresses; pornographic pictures strewn on the floor.
The Travis family could be torn straight from the pages of a William Faulkner novel: a clan to rival the Snopeses in its deviance. Emily's older brother maims rats in an alley for recreation. Her younger brother's medical reports indicate he may have suffered anal penetration. Emily claims her father has touched her breasts and genitalia.
To sort out the family's history of incestuous relationships, lawyers devise a complicated family tree. The man accused of molesting Emily is not only her father but also her step-grandfather. Emily and her three siblings are the result of an incestuous relationship their mother had with her stepfather. And Emily had been sleeping in a bed with her mother and her father.