By Joe Dana
The state document details an infancy of sexual and emotional abuse, where its subject, “Johnny”, was plucked from home at age three.
It is a piece of paper that has been shuffled between foster families for the past ten years, each time coming back to the state for another assignment.
But last year, former BYU student Daniel Manor read what so many others had seen and eventually given back, and he decided to make sure it would not be passed on again.
Manor and six students from BYU work twenty-four hours a day essentially raising Johnny and two other boys, who are just 12 and 14 years old. They are high-risk children with psychological and emotional challenges whose birth parents have lost custody rights.
“Their families and society have pigeon-holed them,” said Manor, who is what one state worker called “the only functional father the boys ever had.”
While the Utah Division of Child and Family Services reports there were 2,146 children in state custody as of August, most of them are in foster care programs, said Carol Sisco, spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Human Services.
But Johnny and his two roommates fall into an unusual crevasse of custody. Two of the three boys have criminal records. Foster homes cannot provide enough discipline and a correctional facility will not give the young boys the attention they need, said Terry Routt, a licensed clinical social worker who works with the children. Therefore the state found another solution, and many believe it is the best one around.
“They just didn”t have anywhere to place them,” said Mark Christensen, Executive Director of Chrysalis, a company that coordinates the living standards of the boys. When Christensen received a call last year to enlist the boys in the Chrysalis program, he accepted the challenge. Christensen said the boys are an exception because most clients in the program are adults.
“They used to throw them all in a state hospital or some kind of institution” Christensen said. “The state is more compassionate now.”
Routt said he hopes that therapy, along with the parental role that the students from BYU are filling, may block the “momentum of abuse” that passes through generations.
“Their parents were wrong,” said Routt. “But a lot of times there were serious problems with their parents and their parents and their parents.”
To break the cycle Routt, together with two other therapists and a state caseworker, personally track Johnny and his roommates” progress in group and individual therapy.
As Manor and his staff enforce the therapy program, the team of parental figures in the boys” lives attempts to do what their homes could not.
“We”re teaching them right from wrong,” Routt said.
All eight of staff members are returned missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For them, it is a way to continue a mission of helping others.
“It”s frustrating to see the mistakes that were made in their lives,” said 24-year old Treas Eddleman from South Carolina majoring in psychology.
Eddleman said he views his job as a way to help the boys “fight their tendencies.”
The children earn points each day by doing their chores, not talking back and keeping up with personal hygiene. The staff screens television and magazines constantly. In an afternoon after school, one boy yelled, “change the channel, that”s inappropriate” when an evening sitcom began.
It seems they are learning.
“They have records and a lot of people think they can”t live without being criminals,” Manor said.
But Manor believes he and his staff will change the skeptics” beliefs.
“I require of them so much because nothing has been required of them before,” said Manor, who monitors the boys” progress with meticulous paper work.
The boys also seem grateful for their new home.
“This is almost like my house. It”s my own place,” said 14-year old “Brent,” who is the oldest of the three.
The home is also a training center for the students who work there.
“You don”t realize it but you”re being a parent,” said Eddleman. “It tests your patience a lot.”
Manor has gone to parent-teacher conferences, doctor appointments, a sixth grade graduation, and even lugged through a mall for back-to-school shopping.
“I call myself the soccer mom,” Manor said.
