6A
NEWS / MONDAY, MAY 9, 2011 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
BREGMAN (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
arah was born Dec. 3, 1990,
in Steamboat Springs, Colo.
a small ski town just west of the
Continental Divide. Her mother, Anita Neilson, was a musician at Club Majik's, a local dinner theater. As a talented pianist and the daughter of a minister, Anita also played the organ in a nearby Methodist church. Sarah's father, Barry Gross Sr., worked as a cook in small dinners around town. He was a burly man with a booming voice and an aggressive temperament. He said police arrested him 15 times for charges ranging from trespassing and driving under the influence to child abuse and domestic violence.
One of Sarah's earliest memories is of her dad hurling her mom's keyboard at the windshield of their car as her mom drove it away, fleeing one of their frequent fights. The yelling usually started in the evening. Anita would accuse him of something, most often cheating on her. He would deny it. Before long they were both screaming while Sarah and her brother, Barry, listened from the living room.
Social services took notice after neighbors complained about the late-night nights. Not long after Sarah's third birthday, Colorado officials gave her mom an ultimatum: She could either leave her husband and keep her children or hand custody over to the state.
Anita refused to give them up. She secured a restraining order on Barry Sr. before moving with Sarah and Barry 50 miles west to Craig, Colo. There they lived in a low-income apartment complex on the west edge of town for the next five years. Anita and Barry made the separation official when they divorced on Jan. 15, 1995.
ANITA STRUGGLED as a single mom. She couldn't hold a job and depended on welfare and food stamps to support herself and her two children. She now blames social services for the divorce that she says "the system" forced her into. Her mental health worsened as her frustrations grew and a psychiatrist diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, though Sarah said she refused to acknowledge the disorder for more than a decade.
Sarah said she noticed that when her mom started to use drugs, her mom lost her appetite and only sporadically bought groceries or cooked. Sarah remembers TV dinners and mustard and mayonnaise sandwiches as staples of her childhood diet.
"One of our meals sometimes was a spoonful of peanut butter," she said.
Contributed Photo
Sarah and her brother said that drugs consumed their mom's life. Sarah remembers nights not knowing where she was or when she would return. When her mom finally came home, Sarah said, she would sleep all day.
While Sarah worried about her mom, she relished the newfound independence gained from her mother's inattention. She and her brother became talented dumpster divers away from the watchful eyes of grown-ups. In the dumpster by their apartment, they found ropes to swing from and discarded needles to use as squirt guns. She could ride her bike anywhere, watch limitless TV and play Metroid Prime on Super Nintendo whenever she wanted.
"She wasn't the best mom at first," Sarah said, sounding forgiving, almost apologetic. "I hate talking bad about her."
Even today, Sarah finds it difficult to blame her mom for anything that happened to her.
Sarah (far right) with her parents and brother in Steamboat Springs, Colo., Sarah moved 50 miles west to Crain, Colo., when she was three years old.
SARAH'S FATHER kept in touch with his ex-wife and children after they moved to Craig. Despite the restraining order, he visited them several times a year. With no car and little money, he resorted to hitchhiking to make the 50-mile trip. Barry Sr. usually brought marijuana for Anita and cash for Sarah and Barry to buy groceries. He worked a series of maintenance jobs to help cover child support.
"I was' Barry the paycheck," he explained.
Barry Sr. grew resentful toward social services and his ex-wife for
1991
Despite her mom's erratic behavior, Sarah looked forward to her dad's visits. He added a fleeting sense of stability to her life. He scolded her for misbehaving, cared for her when she was sick and cooked her breakfast.
She remembers him for his eggs Benedict; Sarah's brother remembers him for his tough love.
"He was the only form of discipline there was," he said.
EVENTUALLY ANITA started hiring babiesitters when she went out. None lasted long, especially the strict ones. Sarah and Barry bombarded them with eggs and
attention to them.
"He made us feel like we were people," Sarah said.
John started inviting Sarah, then only eight, into his bedroom while her brother watched TV in the living room. There he physically forced her into having sex. Though she tried to resist, John, who was in his late teens, easily overpowered her.
The rapes happened regularly for several months — always in John's bedroom. Sarah said he threatened to hurt her family if she told anyone. She worried that doing so would ruin her mom's relationship with Johns' mother.
"I hated being this problem child."
taking away his children, especially after he learned about her drug use and diminishing mental health. He considered himself the more stable parent, never knowing what Anita's state of mind would be when he visited. One time she accused him of stealing her cigarettes and sprayed him in the eyes with the insecticide Raid before kicking him out of her apartment. Other times she called police, accusing Barry Sr. of abuse or trespassing and telling them to arrest him.
soda cans while perched on a shelf inside their bedroom closet.
"I hated being this problem child," Sarah explained.
"I don't think she was able to get very many after a while," Sarah said.
Then came John.
John was the son of one of Anita's friends, a slightly overweight teenager with short blond hair. Before going out, Anita would send her children to his apartment in the same complex.
Sarah liked John at first because he was more lenient than their previous babysitters, and he paid
Finally, when she could no longer take it, she told her mom, who then told her dad. He immediately called police.
Anita panicked. She knew what it meant if police got involved. Sarah said social services were already monitoring her mom. If they heard about this, Anita worried they would take away her children for good. She loaded them in the car and drove aimlessly through the countryside for more than an hour. Police were waiting when they returned home. They rushed Sarah to the hospital. She said her mom told her to keep quiet, that social services would take her away if she talked.
miles straight through. Looking back Sarah said it was easy to see now that her mom was acting manic.
"It was totally impulsive," Sarah said about her mom's behavior.
Write some of the feelings you can have in your
Police arrived three days later and arrested Anita. By the end of the week, Sarah and her siblings were back in Craig. They spent the next two years in foster care with two different families. The only times they saw their mom or dad were during supervised visits.
But she was nine years old at the time; she hadn't even heard of bipolar disorder.
Sarah didn't take her moms advice, but in the end it didn't matter. She said police had no physical evidence other than her statement. Sarah said John denied the allegations. All it meant was that social services had one more strike against her mom for neglecting her children.
John's real name was changed for this article because he was never charged with raping Sarah.
FOSTER CARE wasn't entirely new to Sarah. She and her siblings had spent a week in state custody after her mom was hospitalized earlier that year. They moved back in with the same couple when they returned from Lindsborg.
But this time it was different and Sarah knew it. She dreaded going back. Sarah didn't understand what her mom had done or why she had been taken away from her. Why couldn't she stay in Lindsborg with her grandparents? Why did she have to move back to Craig? None of it made sense to her.
ANITA'S MENTAL and physical health worsened after she gave birth to Brittany, Sarah's younger sister who shared the same father, on Oct. 8, 1998. She was hospitalized several times because of a collapsed lung and eventually had it removed.
Contributed Illustration
Ten months later she unexpectedly asked Sarah and Barry if they wanted to move to Lindsborg, Kan., a small farming town 15 miles south of Salina, to live with her parents. Sarah eagerly said yes. She didn't know about the upcoming court date her mom was running away from.
They left at night and arrived in Lindsborg the next morning. Anita had driven more than 600
"I was a furious kid," she said.
July 24, 2000
A worksheet Sarah completed when she was 9 years old.
Then came court-mandated counselors, supervised visits and bouts of depression for Sarah. Doctors first prescribed her Paxil to treat post-traumatic stress disorder when she was nine years old. Counselors tried to comfort Sarah by taking her out for ice cream and to swim at the lake. None of it seemed to work. She would flee therapy sessions when counselors refused to talk about her mom's situation.
"I was told that was adult stuff to talk about," Sarah said, "that I wasn't supposed to worry about those kinds of things."
To make matters worse, she once again became the victim of sexual abuse.
But that didn't stop Sarah from telling her therapist. She said Joaquim wanted her to, that he thought it would help him. As a result, he and his brother were removed from the foster home. Nancy Smith, Sarah's court-appointed guardian at the time in Colorado, filed a lawsuit against social services on Sarah's behalf. The case was settled out of court.
Smith said she was unable to comment on the case because of a confidentiality agreement included in the settlement. The court awarded Sarah an undisclosed amount of money. It likely ranged from $20,000 to $40,000, according to estimates provided by Sarah and relatives familiar with the case.
SARAH WAS playing in the bedroom her brother shared with two other foster children the first time Joaquim, her 16-year-old foster brother, raped her. He had told his younger brother, Jessie, and Barry to hide in the closet. That same week their foster mother had taken Brittany to Florida. Their foster father was asleep on the opposite end of the trailer. Barry said he wanted to stop Joaquim, but that he was too scared to move.
Soon after, Joaquim started sneak
ing into Sarah's room. The alarm clock on her nightstand almost always said 12:01 when the door slowly crept open. Joaquim kept quiet as he shut the door and crept to her bed. Sarah often pretended to be asleep; it was easier not to look at him. Though she said it was painful, she never fought back.
What made the abuse difficult for Sarah was that during the day she liked Joaquim. He protected her from his younger brother, who would chase her around the trailer they now lived in and show her his self-inflicted scars. But at night she was terrified of Joaquim. She would lie in bed watching her clock, waiting anxiously for 12:01.
After several weeks Joaquim abruptly stopped. The last time he snuck into Sarah's room he apologized and started hitting himself. He told Sarah that he knew it was wrong, but that he couldn't control himself.
"I've never held it against him because of that moment," she said. "Even though I was so scared of him at night and knew he was going to hurt me, I still believed he was a good person."
foster parents, but she also felt increasingly depressed. She fought regularly with her new foster mom and fantasized about killing herself by jumping out of a car on the highway.
n March 2000,
Sarah, Barry and
Brittany went
to a new foster
home. Sarah felt
safe with her new
Sarah also grew frustrated with tedious therapy sessions and mind-numbing medication. None of it seemed to relieve the guilt she felt for what happened to her and her family. She blamed herself.
"I didn't really have any hope," she said. "It was a really dark place in my life."
After Sarah had spent 18 months in foster care, social services scheduled a family unity meeting. The goal of the meeting was to keep the three children together and to return them to their biological family. Anita sought to regain custody of her children, but the court ruled against her. Instead, the judge granted shared guardianship to Sarah's grandmother and her aunt. Had they not accepted, Sarah and her siblings would have likely been put up for adoption and possibly separated.
Anita wouldn't talk to anyone after the meeting. Her brother, Dave Cepure, said he followed her as she walked back to her apartment. She screamed the entire way.
Sarah tried to stay optimistic. At least she would be with family in Lindsborg. The court had directed her mom to a treatment plan that would have allowed her to regain full custody once she completed it. Anita moved to Lindsborg shortly after her children did. Sarah
Barry, Brittany and Sarah with their mom during a supervised visitation while they were in foster care.
Sept.3,1999
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March 24, 2000 Barry Sr., Sarah's dad, spending time with his children during a visitation in Craig, Colo.
April 2008
April 2008 Anita, Sarah's mom, smoking a cigarette at her home in Lindsborg
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