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Date: SUN 02/07/99 Section: LIFESTYLE Page: 1 Edition: 2 STAR HOME BY DEGREES / TAKE IN SEVEN KIDS?MOST COUPLES WOULD HAVE HESITATED. GENEVA AND EMIL SAID BRING THEM ON. By MELISSA FLETCHER STOELTJE Staff Each year, hundreds of thousands of children languish in foster care, removed from the parents who abused or neglected them and unable to be placed in permanent adoptive homes. Each year, untold numbers are ripped away from brothers and sisters, often the only stable bond they've known in their short, chaotic lives. This story isn't about those children. It might have been, but instead it's about kids who have a family and a home, a loving one. Now. "Are you burning my meat?" Geneva Degree teases her husband, Emil, as he arranges a line of chicken legs on a small grill. He's barbecuing on the front porch of the couple's neatly kept home in South Acres, a semirural neighborhood south of downtown. It's a sunny, breezy afternoon in January, several days before the court date that will officially rubber-stamp a decision the Degrees made two years ago. It's also Martin Luther King Day, a school holiday. Youngsters flit in and out of the house, opening and slamming doors, riding bikes out front, playing on the wobbly swing set out back, watching television in the cramped den. The hubbub includes cousins, extended family, the occasional neighborhood kid. But these days the Degrees always have a full house. In 1997, they took in seven of Geneva 's grandnieces and grandnephews after they were removed from their grandmother's home by Children's Protective Services. Ranging in age from 2 to 16, they are the offspring of Geneva 's sister's daughter. Seven children. Ashley. Kenneth. Wendell. Darrell. LaTonya. LaKeisha. Maxie. They were removed because of severe neglect, but beyond that Geneva is mum. Two years ago, her young relatives gained new lives - new friends, new schools - and she refuses to embarrass them with lurid details of what came before. And Geneva Degree has considerable will. So does Emil, or Degree , as everyone calls him except 2-year-old Ashley, who calls him "Dee-Dee." You have to be strong to even contemplate adopting seven children, seven potentially troubled ones at that, and do so in what's usually a mellowing-out stage of life. She's 47; he's 64. Geneva still has a grown daughter, her only child, living at home; Degree helped raise four grown kids from an earlier marriage. Without their help, though, the seven children would have remained in foster homes and shelters, bereft of one another, bereft of hope. So the Degrees opened their arms. "You never heard them say, `Oh, just let us take two' or, `Let's keep this good one and send this one somewhere else,' " says Yvonne Habet, a psychotherapist who has treated the children. "They saw these kids as family, and you just don't discard family." The Degrees ' act was all the more heroic in how it held up under piles of red tape and legal delays as they sought to care for their new charges and make them their own. Without their aunt and uncle and the help of Child Advocates Inc., a nonprofit group that shepherds abused and neglected kids through the system, it's likely the nieces and nephews would still be scattered and adrift. And this would be a far different story. Neglect is more widespread than most people imagine, more common than either child physical or sexual abuse. It can take a heavy toll in stunted minds, broken hearts and short-circuited lives. A tall, sturdy woman who lifts herself off the couch with the practiced stoicism of someone used to hearing her name called, Geneva says their motivation for adopting the children was simple, and as old as the concept of family. "I wanted them to feel like they belong," she says. This much Geneva will say: Caseworkers with Children's Protective Services made repeated visits to the grandmother's home. When Ashley was 8 months old, she was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. The mother was not cooperating with doctors. Police cars showed up at the grandmother's house. The children were taken into CPS custody in January 1997. Some went into foster homes. Some were sent to a shelter. Maxie, the oldest and 14 at the time, broke free and ran away, hiding out at a friend's house. "I was afraid I wasn't going to see my sisters no more," he says quietly. Maxie's two front teeth sparkle in gold caps engraved with his initials. He has a shy, fleeting smile and sometimes playfully scoops Ashley into his arms if she runs too far afield. Aunt Geneva had been a part of the children's lives "since the beginning," says Child Advocates volunteer Dorothy Seely, and immediately stepped forward to take them in. Problem: The Degrees were living in a two-bedroom apartment in the Fifth Ward, along with Geneva 's daughter, Lisa, then 25. If they wanted temporary managing conservatorship of the seven, said CPS, they would have to find a bigger place. A co-worker of Geneva 's found the house in South Acres - too small, really, for a family of 10 (the kids now sleep on bunk beds, piled two and three to a room) but big enough to satisfy CPS. Then it took time for CPS and Child Advocates to check out the Degrees , standard procedure to see whether they were sincere about providing a safe place for the shell-shocked children. "You have to make sure it's not all a facade," says Seely, "that the children won't get passed right back to the (neglectful) parents." CPS was also concerned, she says, about whether the couple could handle Wendell, who at age 6 was struggling with serious developmental delays. It was deemed they could. Within a month, five of the children were living with the Degrees ; by April, all seven were there. Geneva quit her job as an in-home nutritionist with the Texas A&M Extension Service in Houston so she could be home with the kids. Meanwhile Seely, an earnest young lawyer working on her first case and Mary Green, her bubbly supervisor, were striving to find the biological mother. She'd fled to New Orleans after her children were taken from her, says Green, but by August she was back in Houston. Green and Seely spent hours with her, encouraging her to relinquish her parental rights. Finally, she did. "She realized she couldn't care for the children the way the Degrees could, and that it was important for them to be able to adopt them," says Green. But the battle was just beginning. Parents have strong rights when it comes to their kids, says Seely, and courts tend to err in their favor. The children had six fathers, all of whose paternal rights had to be extinguished. This proved difficult. Fathers couldn't be located; court dates had to be set and reset. Two fathers finally signed waivers to their rights; the other four were notified through a public-notice system that their rights were about to be severed. They were given time to respond. None did. In February 1998 - a full year after the children's removal - all the assorted parental rights were terminated. Almost a year would pass before the children could be formally adopted. First, Geneva and Emil Degree had to undergo a series of in-depth home studies to determine whether they were truly fit to adopt seven children. "I've been investigated from the FBI on down," jokes Geneva , standing in her spotless kitchen, hands on her hips. There were other roadblocks along the way. Geneva had to find a way to feed 10 people on one retired steelworker's pension. (Emil also occasionally buys and resells modest homes, a retirement avocation.) She applied for food stamps, but because the couple had bought a new car before the children moved in, she was told they didn't qualify. She applied for Social Security disability benefits for Wendell, but her form was rejected. She tried to enroll him in a series of public schools, only to be told there was no appropriate program for him. "The amazing thing is she never got overwhelmed, she never complained," says Green. "Whenever a challenge arose, Geneva would call me for help." Green sat with Geneva at her kitchen table and showed her how to correctly fill out the disability-benefit forms. Seely called and explained things to the food-stamp person. Child Advocates helped Geneva find a school with a special-education program that would accept Wendell. Things got better. But folding seven new people into one home requires certain adjustments. Green was floored the day Geneva called and told her they'd just spent their life's savings on beds. She was floored again when a local company, a Child Advocates sponsor, volunteered to buy a Christmas gift for Emil and Geneva , anything they desired. Something just for the two of them, for all their hard work. "You know what they asked for?" says Green. "A table big enough so that everyone could sit down together at dinner. They're the most self-sacrificing people I've ever met." Geneva and Emil met when she was working at a drugstore and he was peddling insurance to her boss. They have one of those comfortable relationships in which the teasing ruts (about burned barbecue, for instance) are well-worn and familiar. They'd been together for about 10 years, but married only one year, when the seven kids came to live with them. Geneva makes the decision sound easy. "I didn't want to split them apart, and he agreed with me," she says of Emil. It helped that he had been adopted, she says. Besides, she was used to taking on responsibility, having done so in her family of four siblings. "I was the baby of my family, but I'm kind of the leader," she says in her plain-spoken way. "Everybody treats me like the mother." Emil, looking on as three of the younger kids play on the backyard swing set, has an easy manner, wide smile and graying temples. He responds to a question by giving a little speech about how his long-ago involvement in the civil-rights movement impelled him to "help these children go to school, grow up and achieve and have an opportunity to participate in mainstream society." On a less ideological note, he says he simply wanted to be there for the seven, the way he was for his first four kids. "When we got Wendell, the psychiatrist's report was pretty dismal," he says, watching as the child swings robustly. Wendell couldn't talk, only grunt. He would eat only white bread and drink baby formula. Autism was suspected. Doctors held out little hope that he would ever progress. "We said, `No, he's got a brain in there, and we're going to reach it,' " Emil says. Wendell, now 8, has improved dramatically in the past two years. He talks, although his words are hard to understand; his tastes have expanded to include such things as peanut butter. A wiry little boy, Wendell never stays still. He runs away from Geneva , sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, sometimes both. Sometimes he rocks himself on the couch. ("Stop it, Wendell," Geneva says, and he does.) Emil suspects his problems stem from a lack of "proper stimulation" early on, though no one's sure. But there's a joy to Wendell. He is affectionate and curious, pestering his siblings to read him book after book. "He'll talk to you until your headache come, go away and come back again," Geneva says wearily. Kenneth, the 4-year-old, is a pistol, brassy and confident. He and Wendell take turns engaging people in the "What's that?" game, pointing to objects over and over again, saying "What's that?" Ashley is a beautiful child with a cleft chin and impossibly long eyelashes. She is roundly spoiled by everyone, says Geneva . Currently she is obsessed with The Lion King, watching it repeatedly on the VCR in the den. Ashley scrapes the frosting from several sandwich cookies, then pawns the husks off on Geneva . Emil walks by and eats them. Teletubbies comes on, and Ashley, Kenneth and Wendell squat in front of the TV, shouting out the characters' names. LaTonya, 11, and Darrell, 10, are shy and quiet. LaTonya is a tomboy, says Geneva ; Darrell likes to "follow LaTonya around." Maxie is quiet. "It takes a lot to get him wound up," Geneva says. LaKeisha, 15, is "independent." LaKeisha sits at a small table in the den, writing a thank-you letter to the man who donated money to Child Advocates that enabled her to get the new tennis shoes she now wears. Green had promised LaKeisha that if she did well in alternative school, she would get a treat. She did well: Now back in regular school, she was promoted to eighth grade. LaKeisha had been sent to the alternative school because teachers found a knife in her purse - put there, she says, by a friend whom she decided to protect rather than reveal. LaKeisha has done her share of protecting in her young life. Before they came to live with her aunt, she says, she and Maxie were the leaders of the brood, the de facto parents. When there was no food, she says, she used her baby-sitting money to feed her siblings. "Nobody's going to mess with any of my brothers and sisters," she says in a flat voice. "Nobody's going to mess with Maxie, either." LaKeisha has dark, flashing eyes. Her smile is quick but distant. She answers questions with an automatic "yes ma'am" or "no ma'am" but can talk at length in a dazzling, rapid-fire, swirled-together cadence. "Yes-ma'am-I-want-to-be-a-lawyer-I-do-because-I-can-walk- the-walk-and-talk-the-talk-and-I-want-to-be-a-trial-lawyer- because-I-could-get-up-there-and-testify." LaKeisha has had a hard time giving up her role as the family leader, has struggled to accept her new rule-replete life. She and her aunt have gone round and round. "I tell her, `LaKeisha, you're just a little girl,' " says Geneva , playfully nudging her niece's head. Children are like plants. To grow and thrive, they need certain things. Water. Sunshine. Love. Attention. An abiding sense that they matter. The sort of stuff the Degrees are pouring on. But in neglect, none of these things happens. Even basic needs - food, shelter, supervision, clothing, medicine - go unmet, not to mention more complex ones such as feeling loved and worthy. "In some ways, neglect is more severe than outright abuse," says Leah McElrath, a psychotherapist with Depelchin Children's Center. "Abuse, at least, is attention. It's horrible and it's hurtful, but it's attention." Poverty can mimic neglect, but it's not the same thing. "People can be poor and still take care of their children," says Judy Hay, spokeswoman for CPS in Harris County. "A poor person may have minimal food, but if you go into the home and there's no food, that's neglect. A home may be dirty, but if the dirt is so extreme that in the foreseeable future the child could get very ill, or perhaps even die, that's neglect. We're not talking about head lice here." CPS does not remove a neglected child from a home unless the neglect poses substantial or immediate harm, she says. While media attention typically centers on child physical and sexual abuse, neglect is far more common, experts say. "Ironically, even though it's the most pervasive and, in my opinion, more destructive, it's one of the least studied and least understood areas of abuse," says Dr. Bruce Perry, chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital and an authority on the deleterious effects of neglect on the brain. Nationally, more than 800,000 cases of child neglect are documented each year, he says - and that's just the reported ones. What makes neglect so insidious, experts say, is that it's so hidden. An empty belly, after all, is not as obvious as a black eye or a broken arm. Neglect can go on for years before it's reported, and by then the damage is done. The impact of unchecked neglect is serious and long-lasting. With no one around to respond to and validate their needs, children disengage from their world, and, eventually, themselves. They grow disorganized inside, unable to label and regulate their emotions. Often they are misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or depression, depending on their temperaments, but the reality is more dire. "You ask these children how they feel, and they say they don't know," says McElrath. "They literally don't know. They have no vocabulary for their feelings." All of the children adopted by the Degrees have been affected by the time they spent in neglect, says psychotherapist Habet, but to varying degrees . Neglect also has a disastrous effect on a child's developing brain, says Perry, causing crucial pathways to stunt and warp. In some ways, children who have been physically abused - trauma with its own impact on the brain - are easier to treat than those who have been neglected. Likewise, parents who neglect are generally harder to rehabilitate than those who commit physical abuse, says Hay. They tend to be passive, broken, enslaved to their addictions; in 60 percent to 70 percent of neglect cases, she says, abuse of alcohol and drugs is involved, particularly of crack cocaine. In thrall to a substance more powerful than the potent human instinct to pick up and comfort a crying baby, neglectful parents harm thousands of children each year in Harris County. Some years, Hay says, neglect outranks physical abuse as a cause of child deaths. Children succumb to disease, starvation, accidents or failure to thrive, a condition in which infants die from what is basically a lack of love. On contract with Child Advocates, Habet works exclusively with children who have been severely abused or neglected. Many of these kids have trouble forming bonds with others, she says. Because of the hurts they've endured, they lose touch with their ability to trust and feel empathy. "They become superficial and manipulative," she says, outward signs of inner defenses they've put up to ward off more hurt, barricades that must be overcome for healing to occur. As she does with all her clients, Habet worked on "attachment" issues with Geneva 's nieces and nephews. She focused most of her efforts on LaKeisha, who was locking horns with her aunt and having trouble in school. "What you have to do is invade their space," says Habet, explaining how she slowly storms the barricades. "I would say, `Oh, look at that fingernail polish you have on,' and LaKeisha would give me her hand, and as we talked I would hold her hand." Hand-holding led to shoulder touches, which led to hugs. Rebuilding trust is a painstaking, indirect process, she says. Equally important is the work she does with the adoptive parents. "I tell them, `These (children) are going to trigger a lot of anger inside of you, create a lot of conflict between the two of you. This is normal. Don't think the kids are trying to do this to you.' " To an astounding degree , she says, Geneva and Emil have held fast as LaKeisha goes about the important work of facing her own rage. "They will try anything," she says. "They're the kind of parents who are going to give these kids a chance." It's the morning of the adoption, Family Court 313. Everyone's here. Seely, the volunteer. Green, the supervisor. The CPS adoption worker. A CPS caseworker. In come the Degrees and their soon-to-be-adopted kids, all dressed in their Sunday finest (except for Maxie, who wears baggy jeans). As usual, the family had to take two cars to get here. Last summer, Emil rented a van and took all the kids to South Padre Island. It was the first time any of them had been out of Houston, says Geneva . The children spent hours running through the waves, feeling the salt spray on their faces. Green has brought roses for everyone to wear this morning. Emil tries to pin a boutonniere on Wendell's shirt, but the little boy wails and wails, as if in agony. "Maybe he can just hold it," Green suggests. The proceedings are delayed by 30 minutes. Kenneth and Wendell fling their arms around Emil's neck and play the "What's that?" game. What's that? A computer, he says. What's that? A plant. What's that? A computer. What's that? A plant. Maxie and LaKeisha try to help keep the younger kids seated in the courtroom's pews, but it's impossible, like corralling guppies. With Job-like patience, Geneva takes Wendell out to the hall each time he starts a tantrum. Finally the lawyer comes in, a balding man with a bag full of teddy bears. He coaches Geneva and Emil on the upcoming proceedings. "The judge is going to ask you if you've read the social-service report detailing the background and circumstances of the children, and you say, `Yes,' " he says. "Oh, we've been around since the beginning," Geneva says. "You just say, `Yes,' " he says. "OK. `Yes,' " she says. The judge sits down. After two years of bureaucratic runarounds and stalls, everything suddenly is cut and dried. He reads off the children's names, along with a smattering of legalese. And then it's done. "Congratulations," the judge tells the Degrees . "They're all yours." The courtroom, filled with others there to plead their cases, erupts in applause and cheers. "All right, Degrees ! Woo!" whoops the lawyer. Geneva keeps it together until she's out in the hallway. Then the tears stream down. "It's just been such a long ordeal," she says, wiping her face. She cries again when the family arrives at a surprise pizza party at the Child Advocates office, complete with streamers, helium balloons and the entire staff. As the older children sit quietly eating pizza and the younger ones grab balloons, Seely and Green verge on tears. They can't believe the adoption is a done deal. Child Advocates head Sonya Galvan can't get through her little speech without her voice wavering, her eyes welling up. "This sort of thing makes you love your job," she says later. "We don't often get to see such happy endings." Habet walks in; LaKeisha goes over and enfolds her in a warm embrace. Since working on this case, the volunteer Seely, 27, has shelved her law career and gone back to school for a master's degree in social work. Watching the Degrees convinced her that child advocacy is her calling. "I feel like I've witnessed a miracle," she says. Lisa, Geneva 's 27-year-old daughter, recently entered the licensed vocational nursing program at San Jacinto College and plans to become a physical therapist. No, she says, she didn't mind going from only child to big sister overnight. It gave her a new sense of family responsibility. Of her mother, she says simply, "She's a saint." The week after the adoption, Green gives Emil an industrial-strength barbecue pit as a gift from Child Advocates. "Maybe now he won't burn my meat," Geneva says glibly. Soon the family will start receiving adoption benefits from the state, money that will help Geneva cook something other than big pots of beans, chicken legs and chili dogs. In the fall, Kenneth will begin attending Head Start. Darrell has already decided he wants to be a math teacher when he grows up. LaTonya continues to work on her academic progress with tutors at Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Ashley remains obsessed with The Lion King; a second VCR, donated by Child Advocates, means she can watch it all the time now. This summer, Wendell will be evaluated at the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research to see whether therapists there can help unlock his mind. Maxie continues to play basketball at his school and march in ROTC, working hard to do the right thing. And LaKeisha, a budding artist, is slowly allowing herself to think 15-year-old girl thoughts. About boyfriends, about college. About upcoming proms. "I want to wear a red dress with crisscrossing straps in the back," she says tentatively. "And a pair of cream-colored shoes." ......................................................... Group champions rights of abused children Formed in 1984, Child Advocates Inc. provides abused and neglected children with trained, court-appointed volunteers who champion their rights and work to see that they're placed in safe environments. A private nonprofit group funded only through its own fund-raising efforts, Child Advocates serves the Harris County area and is similar to some 700 programs throughout the nation. Child Advocates takes on only the most severe cases, says spokeswoman Cynthia Stielow. In a clogged court system where judges have mere minutes to decide the fate of an abused child, volunteers work as crucial information gatherers. They monitor a child's progress, write reports, coordinate services and work as a communication link between the child and the courts. You don't need a special background or education to apply to be a volunteer. Currently, the program has around 400 active volunteers. In the past 15 years, Child Advocates has helped more than 8,000 children, but because of a lack of volunteers, it serves only one out of every four abused kids. If you're interested in helping out, call 713-529-1396.
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