< Personal experiences >

Kitty

Madonna

By Anonymous (names withheld and identities altered due to confidentiality requirements)

I will call this child "Madonna." Names, including mine, and identifying features are changed. When taken into custody by social services at around age seven or eight, Madonna was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (MPD). Records and anecdotal statements stated Madonna often, in the early years of foster care, used different names and behaviors. Later testing and physical characteristics indicated fetal alcohol syndrome. It is probable the mother used a variety of alcohol and drugs during pregnancy. It is believed that as an infant or toddler, Madonna and her older half-brother were "sold" in exchange for drugs. Madonna was then transported around the country by her purchasers, a middle-aged woman and man in his early twenties, and sold for the purpose of sexual acts.

Madonna came to the attention of social services when found wandering in a field near a rural town at about age six or seven (her true birthday or age is unknown.) Her hair was completely matted, and she suffered from severe malnutrition. As her vision had never been corrected, and it appeared she had often been locked up, she was unable to see. Later, her vision was partially corrected with very thick lenses. She had been subject to physical abuse and may have had some broken bones. She reported incidents of having been locked up for extended periods of time, including in an oven, an attic, and in the trunks of cars.

Psychologically, she allegedly presented eleven fully and partially manifested personalities. Although this implies some exposure to language, the language that predominated remained at the level of an infant, other than words referring to sexual acts. At the time she came into my care, as a young teen, her written language skills continued to be infantile. Although she appeared silent or without language when first taken into care, by the time I knew Madonna full-time, she was a non-stop talker, as if words and attention were food and she wanted it all. People around her became very exhausted and drained.

After Madonna was first placed into group foster care, I observed Madonna briefly in an elementary school classroom setting. At that time she appeared skeletal and her limbs almost twisted or deformed. She walked with an unusual gait. At that time, I did not know her history, but she stood out from the other students as if a force field surrounded her. The teacher reminded her that she was not allowed to remain in class for my presentation (on drugs), and with a few papers clutched to her tiny bony chest, she was ordered by the teacher to "get up from her chair and go straight to the library without touching anyone." In other words, it appeared this frail-looking child was unable to participate in all class activities. Even to a stranger seeing her only briefly, she created a haunting image that remained with me, of something or someone different from all the other children in the class, and of isolation. As she walked from the classroom, she had a slight fixed smile on her face and she looked down. This seemed odd to me because most children singled out in such an abrupt way might look sullen or sad or angry.

Initially, Madonna appeared to thrive in a group foster home with experienced foster parents. However, Madonna was discovered committing sexual acts on other children. Madonna offered herself sexually to anyone, male or female, from toddler to pre-teen, and to any and all men, mostly older adult men, but also boys her own age. She was able to molest a child in a split second; for example, once I turned aside for one moment, and she had a three-year-old boy down and was starting in on his fly. She propositioned the police officer who also worked with social services, and during another brief interlude when out of sight of adults, went into a stranger's house and prepared to have intercourse with the (willing) teenaged boy.

Madonna was diagnosed as a child sexual predator and committed to a high-security mental institution. Her room had even higher security than the other cell-like rooms because of her propensity to escape. It was in this mental institution for adolescents that I met Madonna for the second time after not seeing her since she was small. At first I thought she was a boy. Even during this short visit and the high security, Madonna escaped and headed towards the boys' facility a few hundred feet away and had to be retrieved.

Madonna was released into my custody at age fifteen. She remained for one year. The question was whether she could learn to function in a home environment. Funds were provided to provide monitoring, care, tutoring, and activities for Madonna 24/7, as well as respites for my and my family (husband and 12-year old stepdaughter). I sought therapy for a child with MPD, but no therapist in a three-county radius would take her. The only psychiatrist who worked with MPD felt able to handle only one such patient at a time, and not an adolescent. It took a year to find a psychologist, and she was only willing to provide testing and diagnosis, not treatment. After testing, the psychologist concluded that Madonna could not benefit from treatment. Her IQ was judged at about 82 as evaluated by the psychologist.

I did not attempt to elicit information about Madonna's alleged personalities because (a) Madonna was assigned to weekly visits with a social worker who was supposed to provide therapy once a week, and (b) I felt that by fifteen, Madonna used the diagnosis to manipulate.

Madonna never acted out sexually with my husband or me. Nor was she violent with any of us. My husband and I were some of the few persons she never hit or "came on" to. That, however, did not protect my husband's daughter Trudi, several years younger than Madonna, or Trudi's friends, toddler nieces and nephews, or children at or living near respite care facilities. Trudi's father had to put a lock on Trudi's door to ensure that Madonna would not enter Trudi's room at night. He also installed a motion detector on the stairs because Madonna would also leave her room at night.

Although none of these children were physically abused by Madonna, she certainly attempted contact, and she was able to manage verbal sexual contact with one of Trudi's friends by recounting a long involved and confusing sexual-related story to this 12 year old. She also could not be left alone with animals, as she would mishandle and abuse them. At school, Madonna was assigned a full-time one-on-one aide, and spent half her days in the special ed facility. She never bonded in any significant way with her aide, special ed teacher, or anyone else at school. Her school work was essentially "make work," and she had a tendency to steal from staff and children.

During the year she lived with us, Madonna was once allowed to take a walk unsupervised for twenty minutes, at noon, with her half-brother. "Martin" was one year older than Madonna. In the attempt of social services to provide "family" for Madonna, social workers for Madonna and her brother agreed that the siblings should have a chance to meet each other. Martin was in a long-term care facility elsewhere in the nation. Physically, he appeared more normal than Madonna, and he spoke coherently and with intelligence, and acted as if he were responsible. During the twenty-minute walk in broad daylight, Madonna and her brother had sexual intercourse. When Madonna and her brother returned from the brief walk, Madonna removed her underwear and left it out in the open for anyone to see.

As stated earlier, the state provided funding for respite care to give our family breaks. However, after providing respite care for Madonna once, most refused a second time. After spending any amount of time with Madonna, even experienced foster care providers spending one or two days, or even hours with Madonna developed what I called "The Madonna Look," a sort of glazed-out exhaustion.

Madonna entirely lacked social skills. She talked non-stop, but at the mental level of a four or five-year old. For an example of social skills, Madonna did not know how to eat at a table as a family. The first time I asked her to set the table for dinner, she placed four placemats and napkins in the four corners of the table, as if to indicate the lack of social contact she expected between human beings.

Unfortunately, her placement in our home was "too little too late." I'm not sure Madonna could have been more "normal" even if intense care and therapy had been initiated the day she was found and taken into custody. At fifteen, the time when most children have developed a social conscience, Madonna was unable to associate in any meaningful way with other humans. She had to be guarded. She had no control, no internal locus. With me, she "performed" what she thought expected of her, but her behavior seemed survival-based rather than on any real connection.

After I finally was able to obtain psychological testing, the psychologist told me that Madonna was doing great, to the limit of her capacities, but that 12-year-old Trudi was about to lose it. The social worker assigned to Madonna tended to triangulate rather than provide meaningful therapy and repeatedly stated that she and her husband would be a better placement for Madonna because they could work effectively with Madonna's "personalities." Madonna had great skill at telling stories to each of her caretakers about the other caretakers. These stories were very believable, and she managed to create utter chaos in the treatment team of adult professionals, counselors, and educators.

I don't think Madonna was able to experience emotions as the rest of us might. Living with me in a positive and consistent structure "worked" for Madonna, but that did not mean in any way that she "loved" me. She merely performed behaviors that were required, and only if closely monitored. Everything for Madonna was about survival (such as making sure Trudi was pushed out of the way).

I realized the only way I could "help" Madonna would be if I were willing to spend the rest of my life caring for her 24/7, always with the risk of her hurting or molesting children or prostituting herself. I was unwilling to sacrifice Trudi, who had her own troubles with her biological mother, and thus I relinquished care of Madonna at the end of the one year I had originally committed.

Although during her year in our household, we never experienced Madonna's violence or other "personalities," the social worker and her husband lasted one day before Madonna became physically violent. Madonna was then re-institutionalized in a group facility. She escaped eighteen times. She had three children in quick succession. All are in custody in various states. Madonna, now an adult, is in prison.