I lived 10 days in a tender age shelter and the trauma
remains. I was 11-years-old. I had not committed a crime. I was taken from the home of an Aunt and
Uncle and incarcerated at McLaren Hall in El Monte, California. I survived but I was changed.
MacLaren Hall was a notorious and violent institution. You can google and read about the Lost Children of MacLaren Hall on many websites. My mother was a criminal and a heroin
addict. She brought me into contact with
a brutal, violent man and my brief stay at MacLaren Hall marked the end of the
few turbulent years of my life I spent living with my mother. The County of Los Angeles had to decide on
whom would be my legal guardian.
My youngest years were spent with my grandfather. He made me live by the law of his belt and I
adapted and thrived. I remember a
teacher I had in the 2nd grade, Miss Moss, telling my grandpa I
needed to be in what they called a mentally gifted minors program and that I
could do anything with my life. 2nd
grade is early to make such determinations.
At around 8 years of age my mom got out of prison and persuaded the court to
give her custody of me. It was
great. Her pure love and adoration
nurtured a sense of self in me I had not known.
It was also horrible. I spent
mornings hanging around the methadone center and nights avoiding the violence
of her husband. In between I navigated
the streets of downtown Los Angeles, Bell Gardens or Hollywood, more or less
aimlessly. I was only with her for a
couple of years or so but we moved a lot.
When I think back to those times I sense in those early
years I really could have become anything. I could have been a scholar. I might have become a professional. The tumultuous years with my mother were a
blessing and a curse in ways. They
marked me and changed me. I developed a
sense of a bully that is as strong today as it was in my 9-year-old mind when I
plotted what I would do to the bully in my life when I reached a certain
age.
At 11 when I entered
my tender age shelter I was in shock. I was
living in Hollywood on Western just off
of Melrose, down the street from KHJ radio.
I had adapted to a lifestyle of sorts.
I stayed out of the apartment as much as possible. My best friend was an African-American man
who had an apartment nearby. I had a
bicycle and I rode it everywhere. My
bully would lose his shit one night and fire a gun at my mom and she would hock
her wedding ring the next morning to get him out of jail. Then one day something happened and my mom
knew she was in trouble. I was out
riding my bike and when I returned around sunset there were police all over the
apartment complex and two of my uncles were out front. They said they did not know why the cops were
there but that my mom had asked them to come pick me up because she had to go
away for a little while. She was on the
run.
I shuffled between the homes of a couple of uncles until
that day my social worker came to get me.
I sobbed as I left La Puente for the tender age shelter that was
MacLaren Hall.
My arrival was a scene I will never forget. I was told to walk across a playground and go
to a building that would be my dormitory.
When I opened the door to that room cacophonous sounds shocked my
ears. At just that moment a kid who
looked 14 or 15 escaped the clutches of one of the counselors and dove under a
bed. The counselor grabbed the single
bed and slid it away exposing the boy who scrambled to the next bed. All the while the Counselor was screaming
expletives at the top of his lungs until at the end of the line where there
were no more beds, only a wall, he got his hands on the kid. He pulled him up into the air like a rag doll
and through him a few feet in the air at the wall. I remember the kid bouncing a little off the
wall. The counselor grabbed him again
and pulled up off the ground and slammed him two or three more times into the
wall this time without letting go of him.
The kid was crying and growling and dazed.
Me? I stood there and
sobbed. I have never been as scared as
that moment. I had no control over my
life. A system was telling me what to
do. In this world I had arrived in “Counselors,”
could beat children. I looked outside at
the grounds and saw a large concrete wall and yes, it had barbed wire at the
top. I told myself I would find a way
over that wall. That was a pervasive
thought for me all the days I spent at MacLaren Hall.
I saw violence daily at MacLaren Hall. I cried on a few occasions, which is not an
ideal thing to do in a place with a hierarchy of violence. The Counselors were lethal and the older kids
were dangerous. The older kids were utterly
different from me in that they were already hardened. Their anger was palpable. I remember vividly how I viewed them and
knowing the most important thing I could do would be to guard my sense of innocence. I grew a hard outer shell from the knowledge
of this place. I did not get
beaten. One night I failed to obey quite
right and a Counselor gave me a good shove as he yelled at me to pick up the
mess and get in the bed. (or something like that,) and I moved from the push
but quickly recovered and survived.
My modus operandi in that place was to make myself invisible. I laid low.
I hid from view behind others. I looked
down always. The hard shell I put on
softened the darkness that invaded my being and my innocence and youth and
trust in humankind concentrated itself at my core and remained as perfect and
golden as ever, if smaller. This is how I remember it. I was protecting something. When they asked who was Catholic and wanted
to go to an Ash Wednesday service I raised my hand in spite of the fact I had little church background. There were only three of us but the chance to
go the little chapel was time away from the violence.
I remember walking by a scene one day on the playground
when a kid who was certainly no threat to anyone, who walked around most days
sobbing and who could not talk back to me the time I tried to talk to him, was
on the ground with three bigger kids around him kicking him. I had somewhere to go and I barely allowed
myself to look. When I looked around for
authority figures I saw one watching from a distance and slowly starting
towards the malice underway. So I
protected what was inside me with all I had. And my day in court arrived and I spent
several hours focused on my hope that I not have to return to that place.
My Aunt and Uncle agreed to become my legal guardians while
I remained a ward of the court, one of Los Angeles County’s sons. I was changed after my time in a tender age shelter. Within a couple of weeks of living with my
new family I got up one Sunday night during church and walked to the front as
Just As I am was being sung by the congregation to accept the religion of my
family and become born again. Being born
again became the driving force of the rest of my childhood.
I lost so much of my self. I lived with a fear of ever being in a place
like MacLaren Hall again. I was an
agreeable kid, with everyone, at all times.
My Uncle often said I was a good kid.
I was a good kid, because I could not, would not go back to that tender
age shelter or anywhere like it. I was
scarred and I was scared by my tender age shelter. It is likely I have been significantly inhibited
in life by my time there. This is not an
excuse. This is merely a conclusion I draw
from my personal experience.
Tender age shelters, violent or otherwise, are not places
kids go to end up stable, law abiding citizens. Being taken away from your family, from those you
love and who love you, is traumatic for children. It twists and affects us. We become angry and afraid in circumstances
such as these. I know this
personally.
