School: Emory University School of Law

Before I began my summer internship with the Dekalb County Child Advocacy Center (DCCAC) I never knew that the juvenile justice system extended beyond juvenile delinquent acts. I could clearly conjure the image of a child, head hanging in shame and fear as he was brought up from the holding cell to stand for final reckoning. In my mind's simple simulation of the system, the child stood in a one piece blue jumpsuit, plastic slippers, and matching wrist jewelry and waited to be adjudicated delinquent under the judge's stern and unforgiving eyes. The judge would emphasize the sentencing of this tiny, pale, scared, blue-swathed societal menace with the foreboding thud of the gavel crashing down on the bench from the lofty perch above the child. By its decree, the hammering sound of the gavel could nail shut the doors of this child's future opportunity. It never occurred to me that those very same courtrooms also hear very different proceedings, namely deprivation proceedings.

In deprivation hearings, a child doesn't stand before the court as a perpetrator of some crime, petty or severe, to be adjudicated delinquent. The children represented by the Child Advocacy Center are the victims of abuse or neglect that have rendered their physical, mental, and emotional health and morals suspect. The very judges whose stares would burn through delinquent children who had terrorized their homes, neighborhoods, or schools, would soften and morph into benevolent guises of grandfathers and grandmothers concerned first and foremost with the safety, health, and well-being of an abused or neglected child. And these children have run the gamut of man's worst cruelties and debasement. They've been molested, raped, sodomized, beaten, tortured, starved, born addicted to crack cocaine, suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, or had their lives altered forever after having been shaken so hard their brains had smashed ruthlessly and unforgivingly against their skulls; leaving them forever crippled, retarded and unable to enjoy simple pleasures of childhood like speaking, running, the flight & fancy of imagination, playgrounds, friends, birthdays, or first kisses under school bleachers.

During deprivation proceedings, there was never a gavel to sound the beginning of the end. Within this universe the sound that one could discern was of a living organism dedicating itself to the good and welfare of society's most reliant and needy citizens: its abused, abandoned, and broken children. I never believed I would meet living saints tucked away in run-down homes, who'd volunteered their entire lives away to be foster parents. Foster parents who've signed on to care, guide, and love a child whose first years of life had been forever altered by their so-called family & friends who perpetrate the most horrific abuses upon a child.

The first time I had met a child after having reviewed the summary of events concerning the abuse and neglect that initially served to bring the child into care, the reality of the emotional turmoil associated with child advocacy became crystal clear. How would I emotionally distance myself from these children? Whatever individually specific means are necessary for emotionally steeling oneself in preparation for a summer as a Child Advocate (CA) intern still are not completely clear to me. The faint or light-hearted, however, need not apply. I quickly realized that in deprivation proceedings neither my child client nor I need enter (the courtroom) and abandon all hope.

As a CA intern my responsibilities ranged from in-person client visits & interviews, telephone interviews, drafting investigation & monitoring reports, drafting motions & subpoenas, attending multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTs) -often as the sole representative of DCCAC-, legal research, and no small amount of badgering DFCS case managers, placement workers and to a lesser degree therapists, school administrators, and other individuals associated with the child-clients for information necessary for my CA attorney to advocate zealously on behalf of the child's best interests. The child-clients, who'd already been forced to forgo their innocence and youth, stood to loose any remaining vestiges of their childhood if inappropriately returned to parents likely to recidivate and continue to abuse or neglect them. Near fanatical attention to detail when I compiled a CA report was what allowed my CA attorney to properly formulate a recommendation to the judge which could truly represent the best interests of the child. Continual research and information synthesis made the difference in whether or not a child would receive the services needed to successfully embark upon a path to recovery from the darkness the children had been forced to endure.

While a good portion of my internship was centered around file management and case updates for the preparation of reports to advise the judge of the child's current situation and whether or not reunification should or should not be granted, a continually rewarding responsibility was the opportunity to go on many client visits. We'd visit the child's school, day care, foster home, or even at the county jail (if the deprived child had also been adjudicated delinquent and was sentenced to time). These client visits are the bread & butter of a CA intern's experience. It was there, sitting face to face with the child whose yellow case file can often exceed five inches and span multiple volumes, that my office work manifested itself in reality.

The most rewarding part of my summer internship with the Child Advocacy Center was having a child call out my name as he or she would launch themselves into my arms and embrace me tightly and proceed to tell me, at a thousand words a second as only a child can, anything and everything that has been important in their lives since I'd seen them last. The little life holding tight around my neck gave me reason to wake everyday and go to work with purposeful dedication to their betterment. Knowing that at the end of the day my hard work was not faceless nor meaningless, and that a child, dependent on my effort and hard work, was better positioned to partake of previously denied opportunities and succeed in a life. This knowledge constantly provided me with the drive necessary to overcome the despair associated with my child-clients' dark and dreary life-stories. Despite many questions that I pondered concerning the reactive (vs. proactive) nature of care for abused children and the hardship associated with dealing with abused and neglected children for ten weeks, this summer internship was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. At the end of the day I could go home and rest my weary head and heart with the knowledge that perhaps today I had made a difference in the life of a child.