OUR OWN SEPARATED CHILDREN

There has been a great deal of criticism of the Trump administration’s former practice of separating the children of would be immigrants from their parents.  Perhaps a thousand children were so affected.  The outcry was strong enough that under public pressure, the policy was cancelled.     

          What has caused little or no public outcry at all is the daily separation of American children from parents who are incarcerated.  The numbers are staggering.  Not a thousand or so, but five million children, all US citizens, have had a parent in state or federal prison at some time in their childhood.

          In some cases, the second parent, grandparents, or other relatives take them in.  But most of these children are put into some form of foster care. 

          These separations from a loved parent are terribly painful. I know that because I was such a child, and I wrote about my experience in my first book, Children of the Manse.   

Children of the Manse, p 43

          “Lonnie was arrested again following a break-in of a local liquor store. I remember the day we were taken to see Janey (new born sister) and our mother at Mercy Hospital in Portsmouth.  I best remember the occasion because I got to see my Daddy again.  He gave me and Brother and Charlie sticks of Wrigley’s chewing gum in light green paper wrappers.  He was with a sheriff’s deputy to whom he was handcuffed.

          When the visit was over we all walked out of the hospital together and I saw the black sheriff’s car and two more deputies who would take Lonnie back to jail and then to the Ohio state prison. He tried to hug me but couldn’t because of the handcuffs.  When he looked up at the deputy, asking to be freed for a moment to hold me, the deputy shook his head.  They opened the car door so my Daddy could get in and he sat between two men in suits and fedoras and they sped away.  I can’t forget seeing him like that, being driven away with his head down.  My Aunt Mary told me I came running into my Grandmother McNelly’s house afterwards crying, “Grandma!  Grandma!  They took my Daddy to jail.  They took my Daddy to jail! I believed, said Aunt Mary, my Grandmother McNelly could do something about it.  All I knew was the joy of my heart was gone and Aunt Mary said I cried inconsolably long into the night.  Nothing my grandmother or Aunt Mary said or did could help me.” 

          I was five years old, the worst time say the psychologists, to be separated from a loved parent. In my case, Lonnie was the parent I loved because he loved me and my biological mother was a selfish and cold woman who would eventually beg state social workers to place me and three younger siblings in a county children’s home.