A 13-year-old girl was sexually abused by her father. Two toddler brothers were neglected by mentally-ill parents. A 12-week-old baby girl was brutally abused by her father.
About 1,500 abused and neglected children are put in New Hampshire courts every year. There, they begin a long and difficult process that will determine their future. In cases where there is uncertainty as to the best course of action, courts rely on special volunteers to present the child's best interest to the judges. These Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) volunteers, take the time to get to know the child and become his or her voice in court.
CASA of NH, a nonprofit organization and part of National CASA, serves approximately 1,000 abused, neglected, and abandoned children on any given day.
"[Being a CASA volunteer] is the best thing I've ever done," said CASA volunteer Sam Gray. "No one's paying you to represent them. You are the child's voice, and you tell the judge like it is."
Gray, 60, is a Derry resident who has been a CASA volunteer for two and a half years, taking cases from the Derry, Salem, and Manchester area. During his first case, he dealt with a five-year-old girl that was abandoned by her mother, who had a drug problem. Like many drug-related cases, the parent had one year to "get their act together," according to Gray. This ensures that the child's life is not disrupted by going from one foster home to another for many years, he said.
People of all professions can become CASA volunteers; they are specially trained to know the court procedures and their job duties. Gray said that people think twice about volunteering because they think the job requires a lot of time, but they are only required to spend 10-15 hours, which includes visiting the assigned child only once per month to get to know the child and the situation.
According to Gray, all a person needs to volunteer is common sense and a love for children. Even with the sometimes troublesome cases, he described volunteering for CASA as a joyful experience, and plans to continue the work for a long time.
"When you leave the courthouse, you know you've done something good for someone," said Gray. "It was a very rewarding experience."
CASA volunteers are considered full parties to their cases — they have access to all documents, such as medical, psychological, and police records. They also visit and get to know all the people who are relevant to the child's life — parents, foster parents, and teachers — to be able to best represent the child's perspective in court. Whether it is the CASA volunteer's opinion to keep the child with the parents or find him or her a new home, the advocate's statement has a lot of weight, said Gray, since they are not professionally inclined to take one side over the other.
"Since you don't represent authority, people feel more comfortable with you," said CASA volunteer Helen "Lennie" Ogden. She said that in her experience, parents are especially more likely to be open with the volunteer, because they know that the volunteers only want what is best for the child.
In her nearly four years of volunteering, Ogden, 67, said she has worked with a variety of cases, including two babies who were neglected by their schizophrenic parents, who "just weren't able to cope."
One of the most difficult cases she has had so far was a 13-year-old girl who was sexually abused by her father. Ogden said that when she visited the girl, she never discussed the case with her, because the subject was too sensitive. When the case was over, the father went to jail. Ogden said that what bothered her the most is that the father was also the one who supported the family, and when he was put away, "the breadwinner was gone."
According to Ogden, working with CASA has a lot of "ups and downs," and that she stays awake sometimes thinking about her cases and hoping that things will turn out well for the children. Even after the cases are over, she still thinks about the children and hopes that they are all right.
"If you don't care for [the children], it's hard to do the job," said Ogden. She said that she has always loved children, and has worked with them almost all of her life. Now that she has retired from being a librarian, she wants to continue helping them the best as she can. "It's good for my soul to have to get involved sometimes and help people," she said.
For information on how to become a CASA volunteer, log onto www.casanh.org.
