system

RICHARDSON

I left D.C. in 1974. I went to a place that kept children until they found foster parents. I was just 9 years old. Then they moved us to my new foster parents. It started out okay. Me and my brother and other sisters all together — it was five of us. But as the years went on, we all were abused spiritually, physically and mentally. What they were doing to us is still a mystery, cause we do not see each other or communicate with one another. One Sunday afternoon, after church, we went home to my foster mother and we had a disagreement. She grabbed me and started to choke me very hard until she stopped oxygen from reaching my brain. All I wanted was to go back home to Washington, D.C. But when I came back home all kinds of changes in the city had taken hold over the community. Now, there were drugs, children smoking and drinking, people having babies too young.