THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 29, 1995 TAG: 9503290026
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
GAY COURTER is a woman on a mission - a novelist turned volunteer.
``I Speak For This Child: True Stories Of A Child Advocate'' (Crown, $24) chronicles Courter's experiences as a court-appointed child advocate in the Florida courts.
This is the author's first nonfiction work. It is her response to a story she read about court-appointed advocates for children in Parade magazine in 1988. Courter is the author of five best-selling novels: ``The Midwife,'' ``River of Dreams,'' ``Code Ezra,'' ``Flowers in the Blood'' and ``The Midwife's Advice.'' She and her husband write and produce documentary films. They have two sons and live in Florida.
In her pages, we meet children who are victims of abuse and neglect, whose parents don't want them or can't control them or both. She gives us the uncensored version of the children's drug and alcohol abuse, their defiant behavior and their anger.
Her goal is to bring order to their chaos, to create a stability they have never known. She compares children's emotional security to a bucket. ``If a child's needs are met, if she receives the love and attention she craves, the sturdy bucket does not leak,'' she tells us. ``But as soon as she is abused or neglected, tiny holes begin to puncture the bucket, and the vital fluids that maintain a child's stability start oozing out. If a child who enters the social service system isn't maintained with transfusions, the essential elements slowly drain away.''
Courter's book is a recipe for gaining trust and fostering respect. She guards the promises she makes to children and reminds them always that she's on their side. She erases years of criticism corrosive to their self-esteem with her own brand of praise.
Through Courter, we meet the girl known for putting her baby sister in a microwave oven, another whose father sexually abused her for 10 years and one who took to heart a social service worker's casual remark that she had to be pregnant to receive Medicaid and food stamps.
We meet the girl whose mother's live-in boyfriend made her stand in the corner for a month for throwing her vegetables in the trash - allowing her two bathroom trips a day, five hours of sleep a night and time out to go to school. If she leaned against the wall or complained, he would beat her.
Such are the kinds of stories told in juvenile courts across the country, every day.
Courter slaps us with a reminder of what can interfere with the bonding between parent and child. ``If you have not been loved, you cannot love,'' she writes. ``Those denied empathy find themselves devoid of empathy and thus perpetuate the cycle of abuse. Every child requires - and is entitled to - nothing less than the unqualified love and attention from someone who thinks she is the most important individual in the world.''
The author admits she isn't sure whether she made a difference in the long run. But that isn't what matters, she says. ``I made a difference on some days. I arranged a dentist appointment or got them into a special classroom or found their mother when no one else had bothered to do so. I listened to their complaints or held their hand when nobody else was around. I told them over and over that they were worth something. I forgave their faults and applauded their achievements. These children are neither failures nor successes; they are evolving human beings.''
Courter writes to give us a dose of reality - a sense of what's going wrong out there - and the courage to join her in changing it. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Gay Courter chronicles her experience as a court-appointed child
advocate in her book.
by CNB