ADDICTS' KIDS FACE TOUGH ROW

Sheriff, Social Worker Aid Children Taken From Homes Where Meth is Made, Used

CROSSVILLE, Tenn. - Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess decided he was
wasting his time trying to help methamphetamine addicts turn their lives
around.

So instead, he became a crusader for their children. As foster parents,
Burgess and his wife Vicki have provided temporary homes to about 30
children in the last decade, many of them taken from drug-addicted parents.

"We've got to get those kids out and give them a chance," Burgess said. "If
you don't get a kid out of that environment by the time they're 12, you can
forget it."

Wanda VanHooser has made it her mission, too, to get children out of the
clandestine labs where their parents make the potent, highly addictive drug.

She is the state's only Child Protective Services worker in Grundy County,
where authorities last year raided 341 illegal labs, many in home kitchens
and storage buildings. Eighteen children were taken from their parents as a
result of those raids.

As VanHooser drives along the back roads of her poor, rural county between
Chattanooga and Nashville, she points to burned-out mobile homes and
charred buildings as proof of the dangers the highly flammable and
explosive mix of meth-making chemicals pose to adults and children.

"There are still a lot of kids out there in the situation, a lot of kids we
are not coming into contact with," VanHooser said.

A state law that took effect last year makes it easier for the state to
take custody of children whose parents expose them to the hazardous fumes
created in making meth, allowing prosecutors to charge them with severe
child abuse.

In the last five months, more than 20 children were removed from their
homes in Cumberland County because their parents were manufacturing meth,
Burgess said. He predicted the total will grow this year, with 10 children
removed in February alone. More than 100 meth labs were discovered last
year in his county between Knoxville and Nashville.

The sheriff and his wife first became foster parents in 1994 when they
heard about an 8-year-old boy who had been in foster care for six years, in
nine different homes, Burgess said.

"At least with us they get to see what a normal household is like," he said.

Another child came to them at 4 a.m. on a Christmas Day. The 3-year-old had
no place to go when his parents were arrested.

The children all have one thing in common, Vicki Burgess said.

"Most of their parents had some kind of a drug problem," she said.

Most of the foster children end up living with grandparents or relatives,
she said. In some cases, foster parents adopt the children.

Although most stay only a few months, Vicki Burgess said she and her
husband grow to love the children.

"Every time one of them leaves you think, 'I can't do this again,' " she
said. "It breaks your heart when they leave."

VanHooser, 48, said sometimes the first call she receives about a child is
one alleging abuse or neglect. She says it's not until she goes to the home
that she discovers that the parents are cooking meth.

When that happens, the building where the meth is manufactured is posted
off limits for anyone not wearing a protective suit and gas mask. But
VanHooser doesn't wear the gear because she says it scares the children.

"Most of the time there is a lot of neglect," she said. "We have found that
after we take some children, they have tremors."

Mary Earp, a Department of Children's Services team coordinator for Grundy
and Marion counties, said placing children with such emotional and physical
problems is difficult.

"Foster parents who take these kids in have a star in their crowns in
heaven - to take these kids in that nobody else wants," she said.

Children exposed to meth cooking often have respiratory problems, sores and
rotten teeth because of exposure to the mix of volatile chemicals.
Researchers say the long-term effects are not known, but Burgess knows they
can't be good.

"The biggest thing is the attachment disorder," Burgess said.

He said many of the children he sees have spent a lot of time isolated in a
room by themselves for hours or days at a time while their parents used or
made meth.

"They don't have time for them, to play with them, read a book or spend any
time at all," Burgess said. "If they have not had that kind of experience
with an adult between the ages of 3 to 5 years old, they will have problems
all their lives."

VanHooser also worries about her exposure to toxic chemicals when she
rescues a child from a meth lab.

She recently had a carotid gland tumor removed. Anytime she has a
respiratory ailment or cold, she wonders if exposure to meth chemicals is
the cause.

"Who is to say the dangers? She has been exposed so much you don't know
what really has affected her," Earp said.

Burgess said one of his chief concerns is finding money to help displaced
children and curb future meth use in his county.

His office obtained a $222,000 federal grant to pay for meth enforcement
equipment and educational materials that otherwise his county couldn't afford.

It frustrates him that so much money is earmarked to help addicts.
Government programs, "even the ones through the Department of Children's
Services, everything is directed toward the parents, trying to get them
straightened out.

"If those kids can just be in a normal environment, they can be successful.
One of our biggest problems is making the people in Nashville who make the
laws to understand what we are dealing with. They don't have clue.

"It burns me up the money we have to spend on medical expenses for the
inmates because nothing says we have to spend money on the kids."

For example, Burgess said his county spends about $300,000 for medical
treatment for prisoners in the county jail.

"We feel like most of it is probably caused by meth use," he said. "It is
putting most of them in jail."