This four-part series began here in Part I after my daughter was arrested on March 16 for manufacturing a controlled substance, aka, methamphetamines. Her bond at that time was $115,000, which could be met with a $15,000 payment (10% of the bond amount). I knew then that she was where she needed to be and assumed no one could bail her out.
She stayed a month. After a court hearing, the bond was reduced to some pittance of the original amount, like $1,500. How does bond go from $115,000 to $1,500? That smells to high heaven.
She was out one week, and we got the call that she had overdosed, which is described here in Part II. The question in Part III, here, was, How can we keep her off the streets? The only way was for her to go back to jail, but she would be released from the hospital’s psych ward very soon.
Our answer was the bail bondsman who allowed her to get out. As fate would have it, the bondsman, a woman, had been a friend of Mary’s in junior high school and had visited at our house. I called her.
This is all going to sound nuts.
“Brooksie, this is Mary mom. We need your help.”
“Hi, Mrs. Hutt. How’ve you all been?”
She obviously didn’t know about the overdose.
“Brooksie, I don’t know how Mary talked you into bailing her out, but she is back on drugs bad, overdosed, and is in North Harbor.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “She called me every day for about a month begging me to get her out. She said all she wanted to do was see her daughter. She said she’d go to your house three times a week and wouldn’t let her down. I met her at McDonald’s and she gave me $500. She’s supposed to pay me every week.”
“I think you got snookered, Brooksie. First, you’ll never be able to get your money. Second, we need to get her back in jail where she’ll be safe. She’ll be released from North Harbor tomorrow or the next day.”
“I’ll get the bond revoked,” she said, “and re-arrest her when she’s released.”
Orchestration
Now the race was on to have the bondswoman at North Harbor when Mary exited. If this all sounds nuts, it is.
First I called security at North Harbor to see if whoever was there could at least drag their feet when Mary was released. Blah, blah, blah. That wasn’t going to work. I asked that the social worker please call me. Then I called the desk in North Harbor and asked for whoever releases people. “Couldn’t you drag your feet when blah, blah, blah?”
She said, not surprisingly, “Oh, we can’t do that.”
The social worker called me back. That conversation was a worse disaster. She first asked if I wanted to commit Mary.
I repeated, “No one needs it worse than she does.”
She replied, “Are you willing to testify in court that she is mentally ill.”
“Good god yes,” I said. “And very likely brain damaged from 25 years on drugs.”
“Will you testify that she was mentally ill before she became a drug addict?”
I’m sure I just sat there, because I was nearly speechless.
“How can I do that? I have no idea. You’re the professionals with the tests.”
“Yes, but she has to have been mentally ill before she began taking drugs.”
That is nuts for sure.
Choreography
By insane maneuvers, we managed to get Brooksie to North Harbor as Mary was being released. She handcuffed her and took her back to jail.
This next Dance Macabre is really going to sound nuts. Mary was in jail a month. She talked another bail bondsman into posting the necessary amount with the promise she would pay him and go to treatment.
She was out about a month, in which time she found ways to communicate with Joanna Leigh. This baby was so happy to see her mother that I cried in secret. I knew that the next time her mother disappeared, her distress would be doubled, and I knew that Mary would undoubtedly disappear again somehow, either by being arrested or overdosing.
Four
My daughter has been arrested yet AGAIN, and again for manufacturing of a controlled substance (methamphetamines) with a bond once again at $100,000. This arrest makes a total of four for manufacturing meth, two of those times being in the last three months.
And twice, her bond was reduced from $100,000 to less than $2,000. What does this absurd gap of $80,000 mean? History says it means she be out on the streets again.
It looks like to me that the system is also nuts.
So here I sit, feeling nuts and trying to figure out what’s next. The first thing is to contact the child psychologist for some serious guidance. I want this time to be the last time that my husband and I play any part in allowing our daughter to see her daughter again. This means watching our granddaughter grieve yet again.
I’m also thinking of writing the D.A. here in town suggest that the system find a way to keep Mary until she is sentenced for one or both of the manufacturing charges. She is a danger to herself and others, but jail is the only option for institutionalization. That’s nuts.
I’m certainly open to comments, suggestions, advice, information. Meanwhile, I sit here, thinking about grief.
1 comment:
Just want to say, that my heart goes out to you and your little girl! Stay strong. Unfortunately, I have no advice to give...just sympathy from a stranger.
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