Charles was thrown into detention for 10 days because he ran away from home.
But he ran away from home because his mother started hitting him and he didn't want to hit her back. "It's kind of hard to hit your mom," he said.Besides, the last time he fought back with his mother, he was taken to juvenile court on several charges.
"She slapped me and started hitting me," he remembers of that October incident. "I had to get her off me, so I hit her. She pushed me into the door, and that's when the door broke."
Neighbors heard the fighting and called the police. Charles was sent to juvenile court on three charges: assault, destruction of property and fighting.
But the police also saw Charles' mother beating him and reported that to juvenile court as well. A single line in Charles' record reflects that report: "abused or mistreated child."
Charles is the tragedy in Utah's juvenile justice crisis. His is one of the faltering lives behind the statistics being discussed in bureaucratic meetings and debated in the Legislature.
A slight 13-year-old with large, dark eyes and the beginnings of adolescent acne, Charles is the son of an alcoholic father and a drug-addicted mother.
Charles' parents have married and divorced each other three times in Charles' life. The last divorce was a year ago.
Charles lives with his mother and two younger brothers. His mother is on welfare. Charles says she uses her welfare checks to buy drugs, then hocks family items to pay bills.
In June, she hocked the mountain bike Charles' dad bought him as a reward for getting straight A's.
"I was spending the week with my dad in Montana. When I got back, it was gone," In the past year, "we've lost a VCR, our Super Nintendo, a microwave and two of my bikes," Charles recounts. When he comes home and his stuff is gone, he knows his mom visited the pawn shop.
Charles' dad bought the second bike for Charles' 13th birthday in July to replace the one his mother hocked the month before.
When Charles got into the October fight with his mother, he was thrown into detention for a day. When he got out, his mother had hocked the second bike.
"It just feels like I can't ever keep a bike for longer than two months," Charles said.
Charles was slapped into the MOWEDA Youth Home for 10 days on Nov. 30 because he ran away just before Thanksgiving. His father and grandmother came to see him his first day in detention.
His mother didn't come at all, according to MOWEDA's visitors log.
The stay was a lonely one for Charles. "My brother's birthday is today," Charles said during his interview at MOWEDA. "He turns 4." Tears welled up in his eyes.
The juvenile justice system had never heard of Charles until August, when he got picked up for being out too late.
His troubles have mounted. His record now contains the August curfew violation, the three charges stemming from the October fight with his mom, the report that his mother abuses him and three shoplifting charges.
Youth Corrections officials point to kids like Charles when they complain that judges have gotten carried away with throwing kids into detention.
"That's not the kind of kid who should be here," said Pat Lambert, director of MOWEDA. "This kid is ordered to obey reasonable requests of his parents. How the hell will he do that?"
Throwing Charles into detention for running away from a disastrous home life will only turn him into a delinquent, Lambert said. Charles will come to MOWEDA and bond with the only people who offer him friendship: the older, hardened delinquents he meets in detention.
Judges say kids like Charles underscore the need for more programs to help fractured families. When social service budgets are strained, programs designed to help dysfunctional families are the first to go, said 2nd District Judge Diane Wilkins.
After Charles' mother went to court on allegations that she had abused her son, a judge ordered the two to attend counseling once a week.
But they only made it to counseling once in a four-week period, Charles said. The family didn't go the other three weeks because first, the counselor was out of town, then there was the Thanksgiving holiday and then Charles was thrown into detention, he said.
Sitting before a counselor with his mother, Charles didn't dare share worries. He didn't tell the counselor that when he ran away for a day in October, his mother wouldn't let him come home for several weeks.
"When I came back the next day, she didn't want me. She said, `Don't hang out here any more.' So I just left. There was nothing else to do. I tried to come home several times, but she still said she didn't want me home."
His mother did not report him missing during that time, according to court records.
Charles stayed with friends and slept in laundromats. "They have tables where you can fold clothes. I sleep on those." Several times a week, he hung out at his 7-year-old brother's bus stop. "I'd wait for my little brother to get off the bus and say `hi' to him."
Life on the lam ended when he was picked up for shoplifting and police returned him to his mother. While he was gone, his mother threw away all his clothes.
He didn't tell the counselor about one of his mother's more unorthodox disciplines: "When she's mad, she wakes us up at 2 a.m. and makes us stay up all night." She's hit him with his brother's toys and pulled his hair.
Worried about his son, Charles' dad took the boy to see a school counselor. At the end of a five-minute meeting, "the counselor gave my dad a list of numbers to call," Charles remembered. "My dad has been calling around."
Charles has a juvenile judge, a probation officer and a counselor assigned to work with him and his mother. A stressed juvenile justice system is doing what it can for him.
But Charles still feels alone. He's no longer a straight A student. "When I started running away, my grades sort of sloped down." And he's learned to love life on the street. "I'm really more comfortable out there."
He hasn't joined a gang yet. Charles says he doesn't want to. But Youth Corrections officials say it's only a matter of time.
Asked if he's scared, Charles pauses. His eyes again fill with tears. "Yeah, a little bit."
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(Chart)
Utah detention and confinement
Detention centers
Utah has 10 secure detention programs, including five full-service detention facilities, three rural multiuse centers and two short-term holdover centers.
All but one is operated by the Division of Youth Corrections: the Canyonlands Youth Home is a multiuse center operated by the Office of Social Services.
-Cache Attention/Detention
-MOWEDA Youth Home
-Salt Lake Detention
-Southwest Utah Youth Center
-St. George Youth Center
-Castle County Youth Center
-Central Utah Youth Home
-Uintah Basin Youth Center
-Provo Youth Detention Center
-Draper youth work-camp facility (April 1994)
Secure facilities
Secure confinement of the most seriously delinquent youths is provided by Utah's three secure facilities: Decker Lake Youth Center in West Valley , Mill Creek Youth Center in Ogden and Southwest Utah Center in Cedar City.