PARENTS TRY TO PUT FAMILIES BACK TOGETHER AFTER METH USE

'It's Only Beginning'

As the child of a drug addict, Angela Coronado couldn't trust her
mother to show up at school events or take her shopping.

"Our relationship was really nothing," said Angela, 17.

Her mom, Tina Benavente, began smoking methamphetamine heavily in the
beginning of the decade and by 2002 was drifting on the streets
trying desperately to score more of the drug. She took Angela and her
two younger brothers to live in a motel room with their grandmother
so they wouldn't be homeless with her. "I was so far gone into drug
use, that's where most of my check was going," Benavente said.

Now, the single mom with a 10th-grade education is in recovery after
spending a year in the Lighthouse Women and Children's Mission in
Oxnard. Not only is she working at the shelter, but also the family
moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Port Hueneme in May.

Authorities never removed the children from her custody, but meth
stopped her from being a mother, she said.

"The relationship me and my kids could have had years ago, it's only
beginning now," said Benavente, 35, who says she turned to drugs
after the death of an infant son from meningitis.

"Doing that drug, you just don't care anymore. You don't care about
anything at all."

Hundreds if not thousands of children in Ventura County share the
same kind of life or worse, as their parents fall under the grip of
the cheap stimulant.

An estimated 400 infants are born each year in Ventura County with
prenatal exposure to the drug. Many more live in chaotic homes even
if their meth-using mothers managed to abstain while pregnant. The
drug is fueling abuse and neglect cases, rising foster care costs,
and more placements of children with relatives and adoptive families.
Of the 186 children social workers referred for court intervention
from July 2006 to January of this year, 88 were at risk because of
methamphetamine use in the household, according to a survey by the
county's Human Services Agency.

'What I Judged, I Became'

Although neglect is more common than abuse, local prosecutors said
they see dozens of cases in which children have sustained serious
physical injuries from parents using meth. The drug can change the
chemistry of the brain, causing parents to become paranoid, confused,
irritated and violent.

Some injuries are life-altering. Last year, an 11-week-old Simi
Valley girl was shaken and squeezed so hard by a father coming down
from a meth high that she was blinded in one eye, suffered multiple
rib fractures and probably has brain damage. The father, who had a
previous history of abuse with a girlfriend's child, was sentenced to
10 years in prison.

But most cases are less dramatic, involving mothers such as Alma, who
asked to have her last name withheld to protect her children's
privacy. Alma said she barely saw her three sons while in the grip of
methamphetamine. Relatives raised them as she stayed in motels and
friends' homes, she said, "getting high and drinking."

She became pregnant again and used meth the entire nine months. Her
daughter was born meth-exposed and was placed in foster care while
Alma began getting treatment. Her daughter's birth prompted her to
turn her life around: She is now clean and learning how to be a good
parent, she said.

"Before I started using, I thought, how could you do that to your
children," she said. "I will not judge anybody else again. What I
judged, I became."

Unsafe Homes

Alma, 21, says her daughter is now doing well, but researchers say
the long-term impact on meth-exposed children is still unknown. Nor
is it easy to distinguish the effects of drug exposure from the
overall effects of the troubled backgrounds from which many of these
children come, often involving domestic violence, poverty, parental
depression and homelessness.

Maria Rivas, 29, and Missael Palma, 24, are both former meth users
struggling with a past laced with drugs and arguments bad enough to
bring police to the door.

Last month, a judge removed Rivas' three daughters -- whom she says
were not prenatally exposed -- from the couple's two-bedroom
apartment in Ventura.

Rivas burst into tears afterward.

"I feel horrible," she said. "I feel like I have failed. I'm hoping
for the best but expecting the worst. Having my kids removed is the worst."

The girls have been in foster care since then, but the court returned
them to Rivas on Wednesday.

A week after the removal, Rivas and Palma split up as she focused her
energy on getting the girls back. Rivas quit her college classes to
enter a drug treatment program that also offers help with parenting skills.

Palma said the family first came to the attention of Child Protective
Services when he pinched Angela, 3, on the arm a few months ago. When
the child care center she attends reported a new bruise on her cheek,
social workers took Angela and her older sisters, Ariana, 4, and Lucy, 8.

The girls blamed Palma, although their mother said she had bitten
Angela playfully, causing the injury. The judge did not buy that
explanation, Rivas said.

Palma, who is the father of two of the girls, blames meth for part of
their problems.

"It stays on our record and our lives forever," he said.

Social workers can't remove children simply because the parents have
a drug problem, but the addictions can lead to unsafe homes. The
deeper the addiction, the more likely that children will be abused or
chronically neglected.

"Some of the homes I have gone into have visible cockroaches on the
floor, rodent feces, piles of dishes with rotting food on them," said
Jennifer Atkinson, a county social worker who investigates
complaints. "Sometimes police find drugs within access to the kids or
the kids have access to weapons in the home."

Parents crashing after being up on meth for days, a time when they
have no tolerance for a whiny 3-year-old, may strike their children.
Other youngsters may break bones because of lack of supervision and
then receive no medical attention because their parents don't take
them to a doctor. They may not have current immunizations or regular
physical checkups. Some have never seen a dentist.

Judge Tari Cody reviews 800 to 1,000 abuse and neglect cases annually
in the dependency court in El Rio, where she decides whether the
children should be removed from the home. Many parents are poor
single mothers involved in abusive relationships, much like the ones
they experienced in their own childhoods.

Under state and federal laws, they usually have a year or less to
complete court-ordered programs to get the children back. They must
attend parenting and anger management classes, undergo drug treatment
and often receive mental-health counseling.

Atkinson said 77 percent of all Ventura County children removed from
their homes last year were reunited with their parents within 12
months. No separate analysis was available for meth-involved
families, but Cody guessed that half of the meth-using parents whose
children are removed get them back.

Some cannot seem to stop using meth, often because of mental illness, she said.

"They are told, If you can't stop, you will lose your child' and they
can't stop. They can't stop."

Exposed in the Womb

Meth is the drug of choice for women, many of them mothers, who enter
treatment in Ventura County and California. Almost 45 percent
admitted to programs in the state named methamphetamine as the
substance they were abusing, more than alcohol, heroin and marijuana
combined. In county drug treatment programs for women who are
pregnant or have children, as many as 85 percent have used meth. Many
of these women become pregnant while on the drug, which is tied to
weight loss, heightened sexual desire, lowered inhibitions and
increased energy.

Bronwyn Redfern of Newbury Park says she carried two babies while using meth.

Redfern, 30, said she used meth off and on while carrying Jonathan,
3. Her daughter, Olivia, 2, was exposed during the first six months.

Olivia is doing well, but Jonathan is so aggressive that Redfern says
she hates to take him outside.

"He has episodes everywhere we go," she said. "I don't even want to
go to the grocery store."

Redfern said she turned to meth at 21, when she was grieving the
death of her father. She described taking the drug just to get
through the day at a time when she was disabled by depression.

She always thought she would quit if she got pregnant but could not, she said.

"It's easy to say something, but when you're in the situation, you
make different choices," she said. "I was an emotional wreck my whole
pregnancy with him because of the guilt."

She is now receiving treatment through a county program called A New
Start for Moms.

The outpatient program blends child care, parenting instruction and
treatment; it is exclusively for pregnant women or mothers with
substance-abuse problems.

Redfern also is taking part in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, a
program offered through Casa Pacifica, a nonprofit agency near Camarillo.

Both she and the children's father, Oscar Rodriguez, are learning how
to forge a stronger relationship with Jonathan through a system
developed for children with serious behavior problems. Using play
exercises, a social worker guides them through the 20-week program,
which is designed to help them bond with their son and then get him
to follow directions without physical discipline.

The couple met at Narcotics Anonymous and have been together for six
years. Both say that even when they were using, they kept their
children fed and clothed, but they believe they can provide a better
home environment now that they're sober.

"I'm hoping he's going to have a good future, but it's up to us," Redfern said.

Rodriguez, 30, says the therapy is working with his son. The retail
manager has already lost one family to meth.

He had two sons, a job, a house, a boat, a motorcycle and a pastime
coaching Little League in the Palm Springs area, he said. But that
all changed nine years ago when life began revolving around the drug.

"It took three years from the day I (first) used to ruin everything
in my life," said Rodriguez, who has not seen his sons from that
relationship for two years.

Long-Term Effects

The surging use of the drug is coming at a time when scientists don't
really know how meth-exposed children will do in life.

A large study launched three years ago is following 415 children in
four states, including California, but its final conclusions have not
been released.

So far, the children in the study have exhibited no major damage,
such as brain lesions or heart defects, said Barry Lester, a
prominent researcher in the field. They were, however, slightly
underweight and smaller than normal for the number of weeks of pregnancy.

Lester says some meth-exposed children have symptoms similar to
babies exposed to cocaine: They're jittery, have tremors and tight
muscle tone. Doctors and therapists say these youngsters also have
trouble paying attention and regulating their behavior.

It's too soon to know if the children in the study, who are now
turning 3, will end up with the kind of learning problems that
cocaine-exposed babies have shown, said Lester, director of the Brown
University Center for the Study of Children at Risk.

"It is very possible that meth, like cocaine, affects areas of the
brain that are in a sense not online yet until kids get to school," he said.

By age 7, cocaine-exposed babies showed a slight lag in IQ as well as
poor behavior, trouble controlling themselves and hyperactivity.

"Those are the kind of behaviors that lead kids to experiment with
drugs in adolescence," Lester said.

Health officials say meth is producing higher costs for taxpayers as
well as for families. It is already pumping up demands for services
such as physical therapy, occupational therapy and foster care.

School officials say they don't know whether it's pushing up special
education enrollment as well. Two categories that might reflect meth
exposure present conflicting data: The number of children with
learning disabilities is falling, while those being diagnosed with
attention deficit disorders is rising.

Breaking the Cycle

There are some promising strategies afoot. About 7,000 pregnant
mothers in the county's public medical system have been screened for
drug and alcohol use, an effort pediatrician Paul Russell hopes to
expand to the private sector. The hope is that doctors will be able
to persuade more mothers to stop.

For those already affected, a court program catering to mothers of
drug-exposed infants has shown high success rates. Two-thirds of
those complete the program, freeing the family from court
supervision. These moms are allowed to enter residential treatment
with their infants, where they receive counseling and parenting education.

"The choice is between this and having the child go into foster
care," said Susan Feldman, a social worker assigned to Ventura
County's drug court for mothers giving birth to drug-exposed babies.
"That's a huge motivation for a lot of women."

Some counties are doing more, officials said.

A model program in Sacramento County provides what amounts to a
"personal trainer" for substance-abusing mothers and fathers when a
child is removed from the home.

"Ventura does quite a good job on screening and access for pregnant
women," said Nancy Young, who testified before the U.S. Senate on the
impact of methamphetamine on child-abuse caseloads. "What's different
in Sacramento is that both father and mother receive intensive
services and priority for treatment."

The available data do not show whether Sacramento County gets better
results than Ventura County, where judges, social workers, counselors
and public health nurses collaborate to help repair families.

But the director of a program in Sacramento that coordinates
treatment for substance-abusing parents says its system has saved
millions in foster care costs and more than doubled the rate at which
families are reunified.

'It's A Nasty, Horrible Drug'

Those who complete the program re-offend at a rate of just 1 percent
to 2 percent, said Sanford Robinson, director of Specialized
Treatment and Recovery Services.

He said California needs to do more in both prevention and treatment
to protect children. "It's a drug tailor-made to create child abuse,"
he said. "It causes you to stay up for days at a time; it puts you on
edge. It's a nasty, horrible drug."

Across the state, many treatment programs focus on stopping the
passage of drug habits from one generation to the next so that
families can stay whole. So far, Benavente says her children seem to
be avoiding perpetuating her family's long history with drugs.

Her daughter, who says she found her mother's meth pipes when she was
still in elementary school, agreed.

"Everyone is getting sober now," Angela Coronado said. "Everything is
getting to the way it should be."