A Return To Childhood -- Hickman House Tries To Give Abuse Youngsters Another Chance

This is one of a series of articles on The Times Fund for the Needy, which has raised $2.6 million in the past 11 years. The fund provides necessities for the elderly, sick, unemployed, working poor and abused or neglected children. All contributions go directly to four charities locally: the Salvation Army; Senior Services of Seattle/King County; Childhaven, a day program for ``at risk'' preschoolers; and First Place, an educational program for homeless children. No funds are used by The Times for administrative costs and no money or goods will be given by The Times to individuals featured in the stories. Contributions are tax-deductible.

Theresa Epstein has a holiday wish: to bring childhood to children who've had theirs stolen by abuse. ``They've lost a lot of joy and they have a right to that,'' says Epstein, a counselor at Hickman House, the 35-year-old brick apartment building that may house some of the most wrenching stories in Seattle.

Since the Salvation Army opened this long-term shelter for battered women and their often battered children two years ago, Epstein has heard plenty of those stories.

They're tales of torture, elaborate in their cruelty, told by women like Karen, who's almost 30 and would gladly erase her last 10 years if only she could. Karen isn't her real name; that is something she wants no one to know.

For the longest time, all Karen wanted was for her two elementary-age kids and herself to be safe.

Now, many miles from her abusive former husband, she feels as safe, or as safe as one can feel, knowing she's living under a death threat made by a man who's vowed to kidnap her children.

So Karen's goals are shifting.

She'd like to give her son the help he needs to resolve his overwhelming anger.

She'd like to help her daughter learn to stop biting her fingers - not her nails, her fingers - until they bleed.

To do that, she says, they need what Theresa Epstein and the rest of the Hickman House staff fervently hope they can provide, given enough community financial support from The Times Fund. And that's professional help to overcome the effects of sexual abuse.

``They need counseling; it's essential for their very survival,'' Karen says, sitting at the kitchen table in her Hickman House apartment. ``My son says, `Mommy, there are times I don't want to grow up, but other times I just want to grow up and find Daddy and kill him.' He's walking around angry all the time.''

Karen has come to Hickman House the way most women do. After escaping her abusive ex, taking only her children but not their toys, taking only a suitcase full of essentials, but not the mementoes that thread one's life together, she and the kids ended up at a temporary emergency shelter where they changed their names. It wasn't the first time.

After several weeks there, she was accepted at Hickman House, Washington state's first ``transitional shelter'' for women and children. It's still one of the few in the nation.

``Once a woman gets into Hickman, she can stay for up to six months,'' explains Edie Maffeo, program director. ``This is supposed to be what it says - transitional, after the crisis has subsided. We help them with issues that are in the way of an independent life.

``Counseling is always in order, and there can be problems around substance abuse, or large families or parenting issues.''

Hickman's staff also helps women enter the social-services maze, get legal or medical help, get back into school or find a job.

Since they opened, Hickman's nine apartments have housed 43 women with a total of 76 children, although not all the women have had kids. On average, 14 to 17 children are living there at any one time.

``We focus on the neediest of the needy,'' Maffeo says, ``and we provide three times the intensity of services, compared with other programs for homeless people. That's because the women here need it. Typically, in other shelters, people see a counselor once a week. Here we see them three or four times a week - or even daily if it's needed.''

The effort appears to be working. Although most battered women return to their abusers, primarily because they lack the resources to leave permanently, only 7 percent of Hickman's adult residents have done so. Most are living independently, and a sizable percentage are self-supporting.

Integral to Hickman's approach is its children's program run by its children's advocate, Ifeoma Okoro. Besides helping moms with parenting issues, and providing respite child care for them, she also does individual counseling with the kids.

``They talk about their homes, and some talk about missing their fathers; some don't. Some feel that it's not worth it to live. We talk about helping them get settled, and we try to help them build self-esteem.''

How much these women and their children have suffered varies from family to family, but ``we see for the most part that the children have been abused . . . that's clearly the trend here,'' says counselor Marie Hassett. ``I don't think anyone here has been only physically abused, because we take the extreme. It's hard to hear the stories.''

``Unless we intervene and stop that abuse, most children will grow up the same way and become abusers,'' Maffeo adds. ``We want to see if there can be a permanent interruption to the cycle.''

But where sexual abuse is concerned, ``a lot of it is not uncovered,'' notes Epstein, the counselor, because the children are reluctant to admit what's happened.

When Hickman House staffers suspect such abuse, they work with the mother to get the child assessed at the Sexual Assault Center, then try to find affordable treatment in the community.

But as Karen, the mother of the abused son and daughter has discovered, the waiting list for such counseling is months long, especially for people who lack financial resources.

As she says, ``Injuries can heal, and bruises can heal, but mental torment doesn't go away.''

Her children have had plenty of all three. So has she.

Karen herself is the product of an alcoholic, abusive family. After knowing her future husband only weeks, and being wooed intensely with flowers, she married him. ``My quick way out of my family was marriage. Then I didn't have to worry about my father making a pass at me or my brother sneaking into my bedroom.''

But within months, her husband tried to kill her.

Before she left him permanently (she made several tries), he'd cut her repeatedly, broken numerous bones, blackened her eyes and subjected her to sadistic sexual assaults.

When her son was an infant, his father intentionally burned his feet.

Later, when he was a toddler, his father slammed his head into a wall, causing permanent brain damage. Once Dad tried to suffocate his newborn daughter.

``He'd beat them with switches off trees, with belts with brass belt buckles,'' Karen recalls. Yet when he wasn't violent ``he treated me better than anyone,'' she says.

But then there was the overlay of sexual violence. ``He'd punch my son in the groin . . . specifically, that's one of the things he did,'' Karen says. ``He used to take a knife and hold it to my son's penis and tell him he'd cut it off.''

The father also targeted his daughter. ``She'd been really outgoing and bubbly, but now she's afraid of men because Daddy made her strip one night and get in bed with him.''

At Hickman House, Karen says she and her family have found considerable support. ``One thing I like is they work on the whole family, and it's not just initially - it's follow-up.''

But the one thing they haven't been able to do is offer counseling to help her children overcome their sexual trauma.

``We'd like to hire a person (trained to treat child sexual abuse) as soon as possible,'' says Maffeo, the director.

``If we had a person, not only would we have assessments, but we would potentially be able to do some treatment.''

That would please Karen. ``I want them to be able to open up and deal with it.'' Otherwise, she fears, they'll grow up dysfunctional.

And perhaps the cycle will start again.