Series: Wasted Youth (Day 3 -- 1 Of 3)

Section 35" Gives Families, With Little To Hope For, A Chance To Get
Youths Straight

PARENTS, SCARED AND FRUSTRATED, HAVE THEIR HEROIN-ADDICTED CHILDREN LOCKED UP

Joanne Peterson saw the four cruisers pull up to her mother's
Randolph home and knew there was no turning back.

One hour earlier, she had filled out paperwork at Quincy District
Court, asking that her 21-year-old son be committed to Bridgewater
State Hospital for treatment of heroin addiction.

It was a last-ditch effort, she said, to save his life.

"I was full of anxiety," she recalled. "I didn't know what was going
to happen. You feel so deceitful because you are doing it behind
their backs. You're asking the court to arrest them."

She stood outside the bathroom door at her mother's home where her
son was staying -- and knocked.

Randolph police officers stood around her.

"I told him, someone is here to see you," Peterson said. "He asked
who was it. I told him just to come out."

Then she stepped back.

As her son, a green towel around his waist, opened the door, the
officers stepped forward. One placed handcuffs on her son's wrists.

Peterson couldn't stop crying.

"That's when I could see how thin he was. He was dying," she said. "I
didn't know if I was doing the right thing, but I knew I had to do something."

Today, two years later, her son, Scott, is drug-free, and she
attributes his sobriety to the 30-day court commitment -- the last of
nearly a dozen earlier treatment efforts.

"It was a miracle," she said. "There are a lot of success stories
that began with a Section 35."

Since 2003, the number of cases where families have asked the
Brockton Court to commit -- or "Section 35" -- their child or family
member to a treatment facility increased from 902 to 1,136, or about
25 percent.

In most of those cases, heroin addiction was the reason.

"The families come to a point where they have no choice," David G.
Nagle, presiding judge at Brockton District Court, said. "They
believe their child, or whoever they are petitioning, is seriously in danger."

Most times, they are.

When Peterson petitioned the court to commit her son to Bridgewater
State Hospital, he was down to 140 pounds and his shoulder bones were
protruding.

"He looked like a skeleton. He was dwindling so quickly. He was gaunt
and had dark circles under his eyes. He was skin and bones," she
said. "I knew in my heart, I was going to bury him if I didn't do
something like that. I didn't want to stand at his grave and say,
'Why didn't I do that?'"

Under state law, a person can be civilly committed for up to 30 days
if they are a danger to themselves or the community. Parents and
relatives -- or other interested parties -- can petition the court
and ask that a judge find the person to be a danger.

Men are sent to Bridgewater State Hospital, women are sent to either
Framingham state prison or a program run by High Point that opened
last year in New Bedford.

"The families, they see it as a life-and-death situation," Jim
Kenney, program director for High Point's women's addiction treatment
center in New Bedford, said.

One Norton mother said she asked the court to commit her son as
addiction overwhelmed him for a simple reason: "It keeps him safe."

Many of the women Kenney sees at the New Bedford center are young,
got hooked on OxyContin then turned to heroin.

Many are from suburban communities. "We are seeing more from intact
families," he said.

There are 28 beds for women in the detoxification unit in New Bedford
and 40 beds in the second phase of the program. Between April 1 and
Dec. 31, 2006, more than 900 women were sent to the center.

"There is the saying, 'If you build it, they will come.' They are
coming in large numbers. We have five to six admissions each evening," he said.

About 60 percent of the admissions involve an opiate -- or heroin -- addiction.

Some, when they are released, stay clean. Others will not.

"Even if they use again, no one's time is ever wasted coming here,"
Kenney said.

Toni, of Weymouth, is one who believes she will stay clean. "I never
wanted to change until now," she said.

At 17, she was using OxyContin. By 19, she was hooked on heroin.

"My boyfriend OD'd and died on me. I used the next day," she said.

Two uncles overdosed on heroin and died in Brockton. Her mother
overdosed -- and survived -- three days after one of them died last October.

She was committed twice through the courts to a treatment program.
The second time, she asked the court to commit her.

Michelle, 28, of Malden, who lives north of Boston, said she went
through 36 treatment programs before she asked the court for help.

"The longest was four months, the shortest was a three-day detox,"
she said. "With the four-month stay, I got high when I was there, and
got kicked out."

Sometimes, nothing will stop an addict from using, said Michelle.

"I used to get high at my friends' grave sites," she said.