The Making of a Man — Pt. 7 — By Dean Boettcher
Before I begin, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge a friend who has been extremely patient with my slow progress, and very helpful in getting me started again when my motivation was at a very low ebb, so to speak. So here is a huge thank you to Beth! (You know who you are ). I dedicate this installment to you.
After it was decided that I could no longer be held in an adult correctional facility such as the County Jail, I was transferred to a place known as the Shelter Home. It was much less secure than a jail, which was a major concern to the prosecuting attorney who tried his very best to convince the judge that I posed a deadly threat to the community. Luckily, he failed since my actual criminal record showed only things such as a couple shoplifting charges and truancy.
Back in those days, although the criminal complaints clearly outlined the facts that would normally support a charge in adult court, as a minor they couldn’t bring the actual charges against you (unless it warranted being waived into adult court, and then only if you were 16 or older and the charges were class A or B felonies), so the courts used the term “juvenile delinquency” to describe the acts that would be chargeable offenses for an adult.
I went before the judge with multiple accounts of juvenile delinquency. That was the loophole which allowed for my placement at the shelter home.
The shelter home was a co-ed facility that housed delinquent children from all over the county. Since my county was mostly farmland, most of the kids were runaways, repeat underage alcohol offenders, and a smattering of kids who had either assaulted other kids or assaulted their parents. I was the exception. In fact, I was the very first kid in my county to bring a loaded gun to school.
I could practically feel the tension in the place when I was brought in. All eyes were upon me. I was something new. These delinquents didn’t seem to know how to handle this new oddity in their midst. Most of them were used to being the one who everyone stared at, not the one doing the staring. It was scary and euphoric all in one. I had moved to a new level, and it was somewhat exciting.
But I must be totally transparent for this story of mine to be properly understood. During the daytime, or whenever there was the stimulation of others and I was the center of attention, things were usually new and exciting. But during the times when I was alone, especially at night, I ached to be back home. There is a level of homesick that can destroy certain parts of a child’s psyche if it is not attended to in some caring and nurturing way. In the system it is ignored, or worse, used to torment the kids by sadistic state employees. Once you weaponize a child’s vulnerability, you essentially weaponize the child.
I don’t mean to say that children who commit acts that violate social norms to a degree that disrupts the flow of everyday life should be allowed to just go home. No, what I’m saying is that the way the system deals with the children who are “problematic” is not only ineffective, but destructive. I’m saying that there must be a better way. What that might look like I do not know.
To top it all off, the state puts adults in charge of these children who shouldn’t even be allowed to own a pet. Hell, some of them shouldn’t be trusted with anything alive at all, not even like, a carrot. There are a few rare individuals who genuinely care about the kids and try to reach them and guide them. But unfortunately, the system is designed in such a way that those individuals are either weeded out or they end up leaving that line of work out of sheer frustration. Sooner or later, a moral dilemma will arise within the system that their conscience refuses to let them be complicit in. I give my deepest and sincerest thanks to those individuals. Your efforts did not go unnoticed by many of us kids. The ugly truth is that you entered a pit devoid of morality and filled with so much corruption that you never stood a chance, despite your good intention.
But I digress. Without going into a whole lot of the daily rigmarole of the shelter home, suffice it to say that it was like an orientation for the places that would soon take many years of my life. It was the place where I wrote the fundamental rules I would live by. Being a small kid, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that it’s not the strongest that survive, it’s the smartest. I also learned that I had to be willing to go to further extremes than my enemies. If you’re willing to do what they will not, you will be the victor. This meant becoming indifferent to the suffering of others.
These things are not like a switch that you just one day decide to turn off. In fact, it’s not something you even are consciously aware of until later down the line when it has already become a part of you. It happens very slowly and gradually over time. Each act takes you a little farther, then a little farther down the line, until you look back and you don’t even recognize who you were. Sometimes you reach a point where you recognize who you were, but not who you are. And that’s just as scary, if not scarier. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the shelter home.
To sum it up in a few acts, the worst usually attracts the worst, and that is exactly what happened. It doesn’t matter that I really was not the worst. I mean, I hung with kids at the shelter home who were seriously damaged goods. Victims of abuse and violence far beyond what I had experienced at that point. They were already past the point of no return absent some serious psychological intervention and some loving and nurturing type of stuff. But they were not going to get any of that now that they were in the system, and it showed. They lacked a conscience, remorse, some of them I personally believe did not know the difference between right and wrong.
Since my “rap sheet” preceded me, as they say, my reputation defined me as the worst of the worst. In a way, I was kind of compelled to uphold the image of the person that my paperwork portrayed me as, even if it was far from the truth.
And so began the process of institutionalization. I learned how to be cold, I learned how to do things I would have never thought of doing before; never would have considered doing before. I began to adapt and change into a clever, resourceful, and spontaneous thinker. It is the environment which determines whether these traits become maladaptive or not, and in these types of environments, children are molded into what they see. This is how it begins. It’s not much of a choice, it’s more of a survival tool that becomes the norm.
With my new group, I was part of all sorts of new and exciting activities such as extorting the weaker kids at the shelter home, intimidating any staff member who showed kindness or weakness, (the two are not mutually exclusive in the system). I even planned and orchestrated an escape involving myself and another shelter home resident who was two years my senior. The shelter home was located “out in the sticks” with only one road leading in. This road forked and led to the shelter home proper and to a senior living facility which stood about 100 yards from the home, across an asphalt parking lot. Other than that, there was nothing but trees and mosquitoes and wood ticks for roughly two miles. That’s why most escape attempts led to a quick return of the perpetrator. There was honestly nowhere to go.
My plan had a new twist to it. Since I was familiar with the woods and the nearby area, we were going to completely avoid the roads until we were relatively close to civilization, as it were.
The home had every window sealed shut, and the doors were big metal ones that had to be buzzed open by the staff, so getting out undetected was impossible. Luckily, the kitchen was under renovation at the home, so we had to eat our meals at the senior living center next door. It was the only place remotely near the home, and it was populated with residents aged 70 and older. Not much chance of pursuit there.
The house parents would walk us over there for each meal. We ate about an hour after the old folks in the home had finished their own mealtime and were all safely back in their rooms. We were led to a dining area which was locked behind us and only opened when we all came in, and all went out. So, our plan of attack would have to involve escaping during the 100-yard commute to the chow hall. Preferably on our way there, versus the way back. That way the staff would still have the duty of feeding the other kids in addition to dealing with our escape.
My plan was born of desperation because on the Thursday prior to the weekend I escaped, I was informed that the following Monday I was to be taken to court and sentenced. I already knew I was going to receive the maximum penalty available to a juvenile in our state, which was one year in the juvenile correctional facility, and there would be no chance of flight once that sentence was passed. You go directly from the courtroom, via the Sherriff’s Department, to the juvenile prison.
Although I realized that this was a big step in my career as a criminal, I was a little apprehensive, nonetheless. Stories of the correctional facility were numerous and quite popular amongst the young crowd of future ne’er do wells. Most of them included accounts of brutal violence and rape, and although I was fairly certain they were exaggerations, there was a little voice that kept creeping in and reminding me that every tale has at least a grain of truth. So how big were the grains in this case? Well, if I could successfully escape, I might never have to find out.
When you’re a teenager, the concept of time and the scope of reality you believe in are usually quite skewed. For example, the idea of escaping to freedom for the rest of my life seemed like a solid reality. When your world consists of a small section of a small town, a handful of friends, and what you have seen on TV, you don’t stop to consider things like transportation costs, bills, jobs, never seeing family again, etc. As a matter of fact, I recall only thinking a couple of hours ahead at best.
So, the fateful Saturday rolled around, and the plan was executed on our commute to breakfast at the senior’s home. Mike, (my newest partner in crime), and I, trailed behind the group until we knew we had enough distance between ourselves and the staff to make pursuit impossible. Once we reached that agreed upon gap, we turned and bolted for the woods.
There was a lot of yelling that followed. Mostly things like, “You guys, come back, you don’t want to do this!”, but also we heard shouts of encouragement from our former shelter home mates like, “Go! Go! Go!”, and a few, “Run mother f**kers, run!”. Chaos feeds chaos, and all the noise just boosted our already saturated systems with additional adrenaline.
We discovered that there is a very good reason they chose that particular location for the shelter home. It wasn’t just the distance from town, it was also because it was surrounded by thick, thorn covered, mosquito infested, tangles of wood and brambles that proved to be quite a challenge, even to a couple of adrenaline-fueled young bucks with nothing to lose.
By the time we finally made it to a small creek which we could follow more easily than fighting our way through the brush, we were pretty tore up. Our clothes were filthy and ripped in several places and both of us were covered in muck and stickers, most of which were like little balls with spikes on them. There were many other spiked, pokey things, but the balls were the most numerous and most painful. Even when you were able to slow down enough to pull a bunch off, they broke into a bunch of pieces and left most of the pointy sticker parts still imbedded in your socks and pants and shirts.
I will give us points for avoiding the roads though. Many kids with weaker constitutions gave up within a few hundred yards of the shelter home and stumbled out to the road, glad to be picked up and rescued from the nightmare of the woods. It was an ordeal to say the least. It took us until dinner time to eventually reach a section of the creek where homes began to be visible through the dense vegetation.
Little did we know that we had overshot our exit from the forest by over a mile as well as by six hours. Obviously, the ride which Mike had arranged for us was long gone from the agreed upon location, so we did what kids like us did best. We adapted and improvised.
Cleaning ourselves up as best we could, we concocted a story and approached a house not far from the creek. After knocking at the door, we relayed our story to the very nice old lady who lived in the house with her sister, and they invited us in to use their phone and await a ride. To them, we were just a couple of kids who were out exploring along the river and became disoriented in the woods and needed to call for a ride home since we had wondered quite far from where we began.
Unfortunately, we had no one to call. This was 1984 mind you. There were no cellphones and no social media. Communication took place mostly in person and friends our age didn’t normally hang around a house phone all day.
Our unscheduled stop turned out to be a pleasant break from our long trek, however. The two old ladies were extremely kind and fed us sandwiches, cookies, and soda. Then, after a long time of repeatedly failing to reach anyone on the phone, we had the additional pleasure of a home cooked dinner. It was beef stew, and it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.
Our plan, which consisted of the two of us going somewhere down south by some relatives of Mikes’, had long since been replaced in my mind. All I wanted to do was go home. I had been from jail to the shelter home, then through the woods where I had been ripped and scratched and bitten, and now, I sat at a dinner table with two kind, old ladies. I was reminded of my family, and I missed them. For now, I was done playing the cool juvenile delinquent.
Mike, on the other hand, seemed to want to continue. I honestly believe he didn’t have anywhere to go. From what I knew, he was obviously not welcome at his home, and the only people he talked about contacting were other delinquents who weren’t going to be much help anyway, it seemed. I sort of felt sorry for him.
I was finally able to reach my mom on the phone. She was in a state of panic. Through her tears I was able to convince her that all was well, and I just needed to get home. My mother did not drive so the next hour was a game of phone tag where she would make some calls asking for rides, then I would call back and find out that she wasn’t able to reach anyone yet, etc., etc.
Finally, about the time it began to get dark out, my mother had broken down and asked my grandparents to give me a ride. This was an act of pure love and desperation because my grandparents were incredibly judgmental and very opinionated when it came to my mother. It got even more complicated when I had to get them all to agree to give Mike a ride too, especially since he had no place to go. To sum up this part of the adventure, my mom let Mike stay the night and he spent a great deal of time on the phone with his parents, as did my mother. She spoke with his parents at length as well, and was successful in assisting to patch things up, at least enough for Mike’s parents to be willing to pick him up from our house the next day. I never heard what became of him after that.
As for me, I just wanted to stay home. I didn’t want to go back to any place where they locked me up and kept me from my family and all the things which that implies. It was a horrible thing for me to know that if I got caught or whatever, I was going to be taken away from my home, my family, my things, and placed in a scary place where God only knows what happens, for a year.
It tore my mother up to have to talk me into giving myself up. I told her I would just stay hidden in the house. I’d never go outside, eventually we could move to a different state. I came up with and all kinds of different ideas to avoid going away. None of them were very realistic. They were created by the mind of a child. I was just a child. I was a child who had made some very poor decisions, but still just a child in mind and body.
My mom conceded to allow me to stay at home for one more night before I turned myself in. She had spent a lot of time on the phone arranging things and mitigating the damage I’d done by escaping from the shelter home. She really went above and beyond for me so many times. For me and for all her children.
At any rate, the night passed, and I turned myself in the very next day. It had been prearranged that I was to meet my probation officer at the courthouse, which turned out to be a ploy to have me apprehended, put into handcuffs, and taken directly before the judge right then and there. They weren’t going to take any chances with me again. And now they had to show me who was boss.
Court was very short. It consisted of my probation officer rambling on and on about count after count of “juvenile delinquency”, (he conveniently left out the fact that the majority of the “delinquencies’” were truancy), making me sound like public enemy number one. He also recounted the escape from the shelter home which I found really fascinating since he wasn’t even there. Not to mention that his telling of the story sounded like something from the movie “Escape from Alcatraz”, it was nothing like what had really transpired. It was ridiculously embellished, and replete with creative liberties taken by my probation officer for it to appear as if I was a terrible menace to society and a security risk of the most horrific proportions. I’m certain that the judge even thought it was a bit far-fetched by his expressions during the performance.
But none of it mattered anyway since the judge had already made up his mind before the last court date, which I had failed to appear at due to my untimely escape. The judge sentenced me to one year in the “reform school” as he called it, and with a final handcuffed attempt to hug my mother and little brother, I was whisked away and riding down the road to my very first prison experience.
I will never forget the sight of the place as we drew closer to the grounds. The place was huge. Multiple brick buildings surrounded by a tall chain link fence topped with coils of razor wire.
We pulled up to the large gates, the driver talked into a speaker, and the gates slowly parted to allow us to drive in, then they slowly closed behind us before I was led into the main building for the “intake” process.
