A mother mourns 2 lost futures

[Guest guest]

By | Chicago Tribune reporter

July 17, 2008

When a 15-year-old repeatedly raped his 12-year-old roommate at Illinois' largest psychiatric hospital, Annette Stacey saw two victims.First was the 12-year-old—a west suburban 7th grader whose single mother admitted him to Riveredge Hospital because she felt overwhelmed by the boy's angry outbursts.The second was her son, the attacker.She brought the wiry 15-year-old to Riveredge seeking treatment for his sexual aggression. He had been molested by a man and begun acting out wildly at Tilden Career Community Academy High School. In police reports and a Tribune interview, Stacey said she repeatedly warned Riveredge not to house her son with another child.

"I told Riveredge over and over again, 'Do not put anybody in the room with this boy.' I explained to them what he was there for," she said.But for three days in January 2006, Riveredge placed Stacey's son with the 12-year-old, court records state. After each attack he secured the smaller boy's silence with threats of further violence. Following one rape they were escorted together to group therapy.The story of what happened at Riveredge is told in court and police records.The abuse ended when a Riveredge worker interrupted an attack while making routine rooms checks, and the 12-year-old was treated for injuries and trauma at Loyola University Medical Center. Riveredge said patient confidentiality laws prohibited it from commenting on any specific case, but the hospital has denied wrongdoing in court.Stacey's son, who according to a police report is bipolar, was adjudicated for sexual assault in juvenile court.She said he now is housed in a Downstate facility that treats adolescent sex offenders.Annette Stacey is a tough, unsentimental product of the Back of the Yards neighborhood. The 38-year-old single mother works for the city booting cars and raises her remaining children in a bungalow she bought in 1997.Stacey blames herself with unsparing frankness for the mental disorders that plague her oldest child."My son has always had cognitive problems due to my drug use when he was born. However, I have been clean maybe 17 years since then," she said.And she is quick to add that the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services once took custody of her son for about six months because she whipped him with a belt. Stacey calls those beatings her flailing attempt to corral a boy who'd begun roaming the South Side."He had problems but I had some level of control—I could always get the truth out of him," she said.When her son was arrested in January 2006 on charges he sexually assaulted his younger roommate at Riveredge, Stacey admonished him in front of Forest Park police. She told him that "what he did was wrong," according to the police report.But, the report said, she added that the hospital "was also wrong because she informed them when [her son] was admitted that he needed his own room. Annette explained that she informed staff of this because of [his] behavior, so just as much blame should be on the hospital for creating the environment for the incident to occur."Stacey said she remains haunted by the 12-year-old victim, who might grapple for years with the kind of anguish that twisted her son. "Now this kid has two strikes against him. He has been raped," Stacey said."I cried many nights from the embarrassment, the pain and degradation," she said. "But my son was put in there for a specific reason and now he is in jail. You think that's the right thing to do with a mental case? Lock him up?"