by aem

Created on: March 13, 2009

Jacqueline is a Union College Freshmen, and a former foster-care child. A pretty girl, with long dark hair and dark eyes, she tells her story to expose the horrors of her foster-care past. "I remember my first day there [in the first foster home] because it seemed to be the beginning of my life. I was at the foot of my bed, my brother at the head." "I knew I was a foster child because I was treated differently my brother and I ate different meals than the rest of the family." There were numerous times where "they [foster family] had tacos, and we [Jacqueline and her siblings] had rice and beans, they had burgers, we had rice and beans." Furthermore, she remembers how "my foster mother banged my head on the wall for spilling mop water. She was pissed." "I understand why she did it, but it's still abuse."

Her next foster family was worse. "They bought us a certain number of clothes, just to save face for the case worker." They wanted to save as much money as they possibly could from the state. For years, she lived on "four jeans, four shirts, a little lumber jack sweat jacket, one pair of Payless shoes, ugly Medicaid glasses, one pack of underwear, one pack of socks. they only bought us four jeans because the case worker said they had to." "I wore the same thing pretty much every day."

Although smiley Cheryl Parker stressed during the orientation meeting that "Our goal is to keep children safeyou know, you can't spank them." Jacqueline had other experiences. "I was verbally abused, my brother had a VHS cassette thrown at him, my sister was thrown at a heater, and my foster father tried to sexually abuse her."

While she reported the VHS and heater incident, she never reported the sexual abuse issue because they didn't know whom to tell. She barely saw her caseworkers, and all she remembers from her first caseworker (From age 3-7) was that "She was very strict." However, she does remember her teeth. "One of them was green with a metal thing around it." Although she had more of a relationship with her next caseworker at age 9, they hardly checked up on her. "It was a gloss over sort of check up, like they checked the refrigerator, how clean the house was, if everyone had clothes and a bed." "I didn't know I could tell them problems I was having until I was seven."

Her last and final foster home "was good to me." Unfortunately, "they had their license taken away, but they were great." "They had too many kids in the housethey had five children and they babysat too."

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