Running On Empty: a DCF failure, Shyrontay Keel, 15, spent a fewdays at home after a couple weeks at ACTS Youth Center, but later ran awayagain.

Running On Empty

Shyrontay Keel, 15, spent a few days at home after a couple weeks at
ACTS Youth Center, but later ran away again.

http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBQM8YSG2F.html


TAMPA - Betty Keel found herself at the door of a West Tampa strip club,
four days after her teenage daughter took out the trash and never came back.

Shyrontay had run away before, later confiding in her mother about
dancing at Hollywood Nites and selling her body for money to survive.

"How old is she?" the doorman asked Keel, blocking her entrance.
"Fifteen? No, she's not dancing here."

He quickly produced a sheet of paper with names and signatures - proof,
he said, that no underage girls were inside. Keel grabbed the clipboard
and scanned the list. Shyrontay's name wasn't on it.

It was shortly after 11 on a Friday night. The 50-year-old mother and
grandmother was tired and disgusted. She had just come from Simone's,
another strip club on Nebraska Avenue where Shyrontay said she also
danced. The manager let Keel inside to see for herself. No Shyrontay.

"I'm beat," Keel said, climbing back into her sport utility vehicle.
"She's worn me down. It's like she get this demon in her. She become
somebody else."

Keel had made up her mind. She was done searching for the little girl
she loved like her own, the little girl she took in as an infant,
adopted and spoiled so much that her other children accused her of
playing favorites.

The little girl who wouldn't stop running.

On the day she disappeared, Shyrontay was one of 570 especially troubled
children across Florida - those reported missing from among the
thousands whose problems are serious enough to warrant state intervention.

As her frustration grew, Keel had gone looking for state help - and
wound up accused of harming her child. She knows that's not true. A
judge later agreed. But now she also knows, like many of those other
families, that no amount of care, guidance or even punishment can turn
some children from a painful path.

Three weeks have come and gone, and still no word from Shyrontay. Her
story of love and rebellion is still being written.

For Keel, the story starts with a child she never expected to have.
The Perfect Little Girl

Shyrontay was 10 days old when she went to live with Keel. It was
supposed to be for two weeks while the state investigated Shyrontay's
mother for child abuse, but the arrangement turned into three years.

By then, Shyrontay had bonded with Keel. And Keel, the mother of three
teenagers, was hooked. She and her new husband, a church elder, adopted
the toddler two years later.

Shyrontay Octavia Keel was the perfect little girl. She was shy, but
"Tay Tay" grew to relish making her family laugh. She excelled in school
and didn't want to miss a day. When her parents told her to do
something, she did it.

Her metamorphosis started when she was 12. Shyrontay insisted on walking
to the store by herself. Then she wanted to go out at night with boys.
Keel put her foot down.

She accepted Shyrontay was growing up, but Keel knew it was happening
too fast. She never let her daughters go alone to the store, where men
stood around with nothing better to do than flirt with pretty girls. No,
Shyrontay would stay home. And there would be no boys for now.

Shyrontay didn't like the rules. She slipped out the back door or
through a window where she could climb down on the air-conditioning unit
and make her escape.

Keel heard about it later from family and friends, who saw Shyrontay
walking along Florida Avenue with its drug dealers and prostitutes. Or
hanging out with young men in the Fish Bowl, a working-class
neighborhood east of Sulphur Springs where streets are named Tuna and
Pompano and Snook.

Keel started checking nightly on Shyrontay. If her bed was empty - and
it usually was - Keel climbed into her car and roamed through Tampa's
public housing complexes or searched abandoned houses in Sulphur Springs.
What Makes Her Run?

Keel thought hard about what made Shyrontay run.

No one ever lied to her about being adopted. Shyrontay knew who her
biological parents were, even her siblings.

"You are so special," Keel and her husband, Bernard, would tell their
daughter. "You've got two mommies and two daddies. You are a special
baby, and we all love you."

Later, Shyrontay would lash out.

"You've never been adopted," she would scream at Keel. "I want to go to
a foster home."

Keel suspected someone messed with her daughter. She found telephone
numbers in Shyrontay's purse and discovered her daughter had been with a
16-year-old boy. When Keel called the boy's aunt to warn her, the aunt
could only gasp, "She is 12 years old?"

Keel took Shyrontay to Tampa General Hospital, but she couldn't get the
girl examined for rape. When the police showed up, a male officer told
Keel she was overreacting.

At one point, Shyrontay accused relatives of molesting her. Keel wasn't
going to stand for that. Herself a victim of sexual abuse, she
confronted the relatives. Both men denied any wrongdoing, and Keel
believed them. They were never charged.

Later, Shyrontay admitted to Keel that she had lied.

"Everything she do, she do to hurt me," Keel told her family.

Keel realized she couldn't help her daughter by herself. She called 211,
the county hot line that offers parent resources. A woman from the
Sylvia Thomas Center, which provides free counseling and other services
for adoptive parents, came to Keel's house and showed her how to install
alarms on her windows and doors. It worked for a while. Then Shyrontay
learned how to remove the windows.

She would stay away for days at a time, sleeping in cars or in the
woods. Sometimes she was cold or wet from the rain. Often, she went
hungry. On July 3, 2005, her biological mom spotted her and called Keel.
Shyrontay was drunk. A police officer took the 13-year-old to a detox
center, where she stayed for 72 hours.

Keel took her home again and enrolled her in the Pace Center for Girls,
an alternative school for troubled girls in Temple Terrace. It wasn't
long before Shyrontay ran again. She grew more ruthless each time Keel
brought her home.

"I ain't no kin," Shyrontay told her mother, demanding to know why Keel
kept looking for her.
Trying Not To Give Up

The running drove Keel crazy and embarrassed her grown children, who
pleaded with their mom to give up on Shyrontay.

"I'm doing what I'm supposed to do," Keel would tell them, but inside
she felt like a failure.

When she called the Department of Children & Families in January 2006,
Keel had hit rock bottom. She begged the state to take Shyrontay, but
she had no idea what it would cost her.

"In order to get help, you've got to tell DCF Shyrontay can't come
home," Keel recalled a caseworker telling her. "You've got to say you're
not taking her back."

The only way the state could take custody of Shyrontay was to charge her
mother with abandonment, abuse or neglect. Keel was crestfallen.

"I didn't abandon my baby," she told workers.

Still, Keel did what she was told.

Hillsborough Kids Inc., a Tampa agency that supervises local foster care
and adoptions for the state, placed Shyrontay in the Good Night Shelter
for girls. She ran home to Keel the next day.

Caseworkers put Shyrontay back in the shelter and ordered counseling for
her and Keel. Then they devised a plan to reunite the pair. Just in
case, though, they also created a path that would allow Shyrontay to
live independently from her mother.

Shyrontay ran again in February, then March. This time she was gone for
a month. Keel put the girl's picture in the Florida Sentinel Bulletin, a
newspaper serving Tampa's black community. Then a call came from Broward
County in April. Police officers had picked up Shyrontay while arresting
a drug dealer.

Shyrontay told Keel that some guy she met in Tampa drove her to a Miami
strip club. When she refused to dance, he put her in the trunk of his
car. It scared Shyrontay, but not enough to keep her home.

There were other stories, too, about having a gun shoved in her face.

"Why do you want to live this way?" Keel would ask her daughter.

Shyrontay just shrugged. "I don't know."

"You going to die out there," her sisters would warn her.

"I don't care," Shyrontay replied.

Later, Keel wrote in a court document that Shyrontay had risky romantic
relationships and tried marijuana and cocaine.

A judge withheld Keel's abandonment charge that summer, but in September
the state sued her for child support. She fought back and won. By
December, with the state failing miserably to do a better job than Keel,
Shyrontay was back in her mother's custody.

Caseworkers suggested some guidelines: Establish a curfew for the
14-year-old and explain what happens when the rules are broken.

"Shyrontay will remain in the home and abide by ALL rules," the family
safety contract read. "There will be no running away."

Keel felt defeated. After nearly a year of trying to get the state to
help her, she was back at square one.

Shyrontay ran again in January.

Keel didn't call anyone this time.
A Sad Birthday

Shyrontay seemed remorseful when Keel went to visit her at the ACTS
Youth Center, a substance abuse treatment center for teens. It was May
6, Shyrontay's 15th birthday.

At home, she would have gotten cake and gifts and homemade collard
greens. Instead, Shyrontay sat behind a locked metal door in a concrete
block room painted gray. She wore a wig of silky straight black hair and
someone else's T-shirt advertising Ron Jon's surf shop.

She could barely lift her head.

"What's wrong with you?" Keel asked her daughter.

"I'm depressed," Shyrontay said, in a tone that suggested her mother
should've known.

She'd always been a happy little girl. Now she was moody and belligerent.

Keel had left Shyrontay at the center April 24. Medicaid covered the
cost because Keel is unemployed because of a disability. It was a
last-ditch effort to keep her from the drugs and the thugs and the
streets - at least until a judge decided whether to lock her up for
stealing a dress from Kmart.

Another judge would determine whether the state could force Shyrontay
into substance abuse treatment. It would be the only way for the state
to lock up Shyrontay unless she landed in juvenile detention.

Instead, Shyrontay was given another chance, ordered to stay home and go
to school.

Keel had let herself believe this time would be different. This time
Shyrontay would turn her life around, and Keel would be right there with
her.

She slept in the bed with Shyrontay. A sister, a brother, a cousin -
someone - always kept an eye on her. They took her shopping for clothes
and made her dinner.

It was like Shyrontay had moved away and was back for a visit.

"Look who's home," her big sister told a friend who dropped by to see Keel.

When another sister showed off her recent sonogram of twins, Shyrontay
had to catch her breath.

"I'm so blowed," she said while curled up on the leather couch. "I'm so
blowed."

It was sinking in - she had missed so much. Still, nothing could quell
her urge to be free.
Too Tired To Continue

On May 14, sometime after 8a.m., Shyrontay escaped from her mother's
apartment near the University of South Florida.

A week later, during a hearing to decide Shyrontay's fate - even though
Shyrontay wasn't there - Keel finally unleashed two year's worth of
frustration with the state's child welfare system.

Shyrontay had gone through at least four caseworkers in two years, never
meeting the most recent one. She was placed in the same shelters despite
running again and again. It took a year for her to get a psychological
evaluation. Most times when she ran, it was Keel who went after her.

As the Hillsborough Kids supervisor stumbled through her testimony of
visitations and case plans, Keel dropped her bomb.

"I would like to relinquish my child," she told General Master Jon
Johnson, who served as mediator.

The Hillsborough Kids supervisor's jaw dropped.

"I've done everything in my power to keep her safe," Keel went on.
"Nothing and nobody has helped her."

Anger and sadness roiled inside Keel. She thought about all the
sleepless nights, the court dates, the accusations against her.

"I'm tired of asking for help," she said. "I'm doing nothing to her but
loving her. I'm giving her everything I can give her, and it's not enough."

Johnson seemed compassionate but remained focused on where Shyrontay was
going, not where she had been.

He ordered Hillsborough Kids to place Shyrontay into protective custody
- if she is found - not back at the Good Night Shelter, which he called
"unsafe and unstable" for a child with Shyrontay's needs.

Then he made a promise to Keel. "The child will not come back to you."

Johnson stopped short of terminating Keel's claim to the girl, telling
her she could visit Shyrontay and continue to be a part of her life.

"You are a constant," he said. "That's going to be needed in the future."

Keel wadded a used Kleenex in her left hand and held her head high as
she left the courtroom. She didn't feel relieved. She didn't feel
vindicated, even when the caseworker tried to be apologetic and helpful
in the hallway.

Instead, she cried for Shyrontay.
BY THE NUMBERS

603

Average number of children missing at any given time from state care in
Florida during 2006

169

Average number of children missing at any given time in the SunCoast
Region, which includes Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties

50

Percentage of cases in which children are found within three days

95

Percentage of cases in which children are found within three months
Source: Department of Children & Families
BY THE NUMBERS
Source: Department of Children & Families

Researcher Catherine Hammer and reporter Chris Echegaray contributed to
this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144
or .
IF YOU SEE HER

Shyrontay Keel is listed on the Florida Department of Children &
Families' missing children's list online. If you see her, call your
local law enforcement agency or Hillsborough Kids Inc. at (813) 225-1105.
NEED HELP?
If your child is missing, call local law enforcement immediately to make
a report.

•Tampa Police Missing Person's Unit: (813) 276-3516

•Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office: (813) 247-8200

•Hillsborough County has a crisis hot line that offers parent resources:
Call 211.

•National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: (703) 274-3900

•Missing Children Information Clearing House: 1-888-356-4774 (8 a.m. to
5 p.m.)

•Child Protection Education of America, in Tampa, works with parents and
law enforcement agencies to help find missing and exploited children:
Call (813) 626-3001 or 1-866-872-2445.




CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NSA / CIA
WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....

CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf


*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*

Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...