Three cocaine addicts were charged with a major break-in of a Kingstown store last month. Nothing new; just cocaine addicts doing what cocaine addicts do.
In my line of work, I have regularly seen drug-addicted persons in and out of Court for one offense or the other - theft, assault, possession, and even being accused of murder. But this story was different, I could not shake it from my mind.
I often make the mistake of getting attached to stories - I think about the central characters long after they have died, gone to prison, or have been swallowed whole by their grief. I pray for their well-being in my waking hours and talk with them in my dreams. I know it is not always healthy but some stories leave a mark on you - as was the case with the story of John*.
My co-worker came back from his court assignment to tell us, as he does daily, about the escapades of the accused who pass through the hands of the judiciary in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. On this particular day, he told us the story of John, a 16-year-old boy who has, in my opinion, encountered the most unfortunate series of events during his short life.
John is a teenager, addicted to cocaine, homeless, sleeping in and around Kingstown, motherless, his father imprisoned (his older brother as well) and also a convict. And of course, there is no way to scale these troubling situations but I feel as if the drug addiction is the worst of the afflictions to have befallen him.
As my coworker always does when he brings us stories, he gives us photos as well- he flipped through the day's capturings on the company's camera, swung it around and showed us the photo of John - a lanky boy with a permanently confused look scrawled on his face. It took a few cool seconds for the memory to hit me but when it did, I soon realized that I knew John. Not personally, but I had met him a few years before in the area of Little Tokyo by Phoenix Kitchen.
The same question back then- when he had approached me, his bare feet dry and black from walking the City streets, no shirt on his bony chest, his adolescent face carrying the worry and stress of a grown man and with a meek and pitiful, 'Miss I wan a dolluh", - returned now, 'how could a child find himself on the street, homeless and a drug addict? A child!?"
Situations such as these, where children, failed by the systems meant to protect them and then discarded, always bring my thoughts back to my own child. I break a little inside when I consider what my boy's life would be like without the love and support of his parents, his grandparents, and his aunts and uncles. I wonder, fantasize even, about where John would be had he been born into different circumstances.
Where, instead of roaming Paul's Avenue begging for money for his next fix, he would pass there on his way home from school, not half-naked as I usually see him but outfitted in trousers, a button-down shirt, wearing his school's uniform with pride. Rather than sleeping on the cold concrete and in abandoned structures he would lay his head on a fluffed-up pillow, his body on a bed that can comfortably hold his slender frame and be covered in warm and clean sheets. He would wake up to a hot meal prepared by hands that loved and adored him, not meals purchased from Kingstown restaurants and shops by strangers, well-meaning but strangers nonetheless. And when he needed discipline, as most teenagers do, there would be a loving parent or guardian there to administer it, not a courtroom filled with the stern faces of Magistrates and police officers.
When John appeared in Court on February 16 , he had already spent two months on remand after he was charged with burglary and damage to property. He told the Court about the encounters with his father who was serving time in prison for attempted murder.
"[My father] does beat me round there. My big brother is doing 20 years because he shoot a man. So, if you sentence me, I might go round and meet him.”
John's father, according to the teen's testimony, used physical beatings as a form of rehabilitation, to compel him to drop his drug habit. If you look close enough, you might see the comedy in this: a convict father trying to beat the drug addiction out of his convict son.
"... I know them from the court. So based on his socialization, I am not surprised that he is before me." This is the statement the Magistrate made to the Court, about John and his family- sort of a writing on the wall about the inevitability of John's becoming a criminal.
The teen never had a chance, that much is clear. But mulling over the past fixes nothing. The damage is done: the death of his mother and absence of his father has already left him exposed to the drug pushers, the cocaine has already corrupted his brain and he has already started walking down a sure and certain path to prison, perhaps even death. The problem is clear; the question now is how can John be saved?
John, the Magistrate, the Court Prosecutor and Chair of the Board of Directors for Marion House, a walk-in counseling program, went back and forth on the course of action to deal with his drug addiction and the criminal charges brought against him. Jail was believed to not be the best option for the teen but a non-custodial sentence, as the Prosecutor noted, would mean John would find himself back on the street using cocaine once again and potentially engage in further criminal activity. It was decided that he be released in the custody of the Director of Marion House to undergo counseling. Note that Marion House is not a residential drug rehabilitation facility.
He left the court on February 17 and by that evening my colleagues and I met him back in Paul's Avenue, scouring for $5 to buy dope.
I had the opportunity to speak with John a few times since his court appearance.Between his pleadings for money, I tried to question him about his circumstances, his drug habits, and any family who could help him.
“Miss me don have nobody out hay miss.” He turned away from me and raised his voice when he said this. There seemed to be a lot of anger in his statement, or perhaps he was just agitated that he was not getting what he wanted from this interaction. I eventually relented and gave him the money he asked for, much to the disapproval of a passer-by.
I can't say definitively the reason why I questioned John on his cocaine habits or his homelessness- I figure it is human curiosity to want to know why. But the why is not as important as the how.
How is John going to get the help he needs to beat his drug addiction? How is he going to be pulled back from the fringes of society and be brought into the folds of productivity and success? How will this teen be supported by the health care system, the rehabilitative systems and community in the country? Or, are we simply going to leave John, along with all the broken children, to walk themselves to certain demise?
*Not the teen's real name
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