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more photosThe Scotts
James and Alicia Scott, who will graduate from Deschutes County’s Family Drug Court on Monday, look at family photos taken by Randy Johnson at Westside Church on Tuesday night. Alicia’s oldest son, William Morgan, holds the couple’s 5-month-old baby, Elijah. Alicia’s two younger children, Michael Jensen, left, and Jordan Morgan, center, vie for a look at family photos that will be displayed at the Scotts’ graduation.
Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
Life beyond meth
Three parents overcame years of addiction to become the first to graduate from Deschutes County Family Drug Court
By Cindy Powers / The Bulletin
Published: March 30. 2008 4:00AM PSTRoughly two years ago, Tonya Babb realized things had to change after she left her daughter with a friend, knowing child welfare workers were coming to take the infant away.
“I traded my baby for a bag of dope, and I knew exactly what I was doing,” she said. “I kept using. I knew the consequences, and I kept using.”
Daysha Babb was born at her Bend home nearly seven weeks earlier. The premature baby weighed in at 5 pounds, 2 ounces.
The midwife told Babb that since Daysha weighed over 5 pounds, she didn’t have to go to the hospital for care. Babb knew that if Daysha tested positive for drugs at the hospital, social workers might take the baby.
“But I knew I had to (take her),” Babb, 34, said. “I knew she was going to test positive — there was no way she wasn’t — but it was about her, not about me.”
On Monday, Babb and Bend couple James and Alicia Scott will be the first to graduate from Deschutes County Family Drug Court. They are sober, living independently and caring for their children.
The three landed in the drug court after years of methamphetamine addiction threatened to ruin their lives and separate them from their children.
The court, launched in late 2006, serves parents who have had drug-related criminal charges filed against them, are at risk of losing their children because of addiction issues, or who have already had them taken away. Participants are ordered into drug treatment instead of jail and undergo long-term, intensive monitoring by a team of service providers.
Since then, it has taken in 31 parents with a total of 54 children, said Colleen Kruse, treatment coordinator for the court. In that time, six have left for various reasons and three have been kicked out. The rest have stuck with the rigorous program.
“We have an opportunity through drug court to help people to actually create a new life for themselves and their children,” said Deschutes County Circuit Court Judge Alta Brady, who presides over the court. “We don’t have that opportunity in the typical criminal justice system.”
The court brings together a 15-member team of treatment providers and social service agencies. The group provides “wraparound services” ranging from help with getting housing to employment counseling and dental care.
Studies of 2,100 drug courts nationwide conducted by the National Institute of Justice show they reduce criminal recidivism and keep families together. And they’re less expensive than locking addicts up. For each $1 spent on drug court participants, it would cost about $7 to house them in prison or jail, according to a study of Multnomah County’s drug court.
“And every one of those drug court graduates is a person who will be giving back to the community rather than taking,” Brady said. “They have children who may have ended up in foster care or with parental rights terminated, and instead, they will be raised by loving parents. So that is really what drug court is about.”
Tonya Babb said she is proof of that, and that she could not have made it out of addiction alone.
“Without drug court, I couldn’t have done this,” Babb said, watching her sleeping daughter at the northeast Bend condominium she now rents.
Her part-time job at McDonald’s doesn’t cover all of her expenses, so Babb still has some state and federal help. But her goal is to become self-sufficient as quickly as possible, an aim that seemed unrealistic to her less than two years ago.
Her addiction
Babb said she started drinking alcohol and smoking pot when she was a teen.
She doesn’t know exactly why.
Neither of her parents, who worked as a contractor and waitress in her hometown of Brookings, used drugs or drank alcohol.
At 19, Babb said her best friend’s mom offered her me th. By 21 she was using every day.
She went from snorting lines to smoking the drug, a method that rots away users’ teeth.
For the next seven years, she worked as a child care provider and gave in-home health care to the elderly.
“Sometimes I think I chose in-home care because I was alone, and nobody knew that I was using,” she said. “And you don’t realize that you probably aren’t doing a very good jo b.”
Eventually she had all of her top teeth removed and replaced with dentures.
“And the next day I was smoking meth,” she said. “Every day I would wake up and want more.”
A few days later, she took her teeth out to clean them and was horrified to find crystallized meth embedded in her gums.
“They say you gotta hit bottom to come back up, but I was at bottom for a long time,” she said.
She moved to Bend, in part to get away from her old lifestyle, in 2004. She met a man
and fell in love.
Babb said Daysha’s father is now serving just short of two years in a California prison for dealing drugs. He’ll be depo rted when he gets out, she said.
The final straw
Babb said she held off her daily methamphetamine habit while she was pregnant with Daysha but admits she smoked the day before her daughter was born.
When the baby tested positive for methamphetamine, hospital workers were legally required to report it to child welfare and the police.
There was an outstanding warrant for her arrest on a forgery charge, and police took her to jail when Daysha was 3 days old.
“As soon as I got out, I smoked a bowl and then I ate,” she said.
When Daysha was 10 days old and still in the hospital, her father was arrested for dealing drugs. Five days later, the baby came home with her mother, and Babb’s caseworker told her about drug court.
But five weeks later, she missed her first court date. She left Daysha with her friend, bought a $100 bag of meth and smoked.
“Then Daysha’s dad called me and said that one of the DHS workers was there and had him sign papers at the jail,” Babb said, wiping away tears. “And as soon as I heard that, I knew, I knew.”
She went to drug court the next day, and Deschutes County Circuit Court Judge Alta Brady sent her to jail for eight days.
Babb was released to a transitional house and hasn’t used since.
She got Daysha back from foster care about three months after she was taken. Babb spent that time in treatment and parenting classes and was subject to random urinalyses.
She relies on Bend Area Transit for transportation to and from Daysha’s day care and her job. By the time she hops the bus, drops Daysha off and gets back on the bus, Babb said it can take more than an hour to get to work.
This winter, when heavy snow piled up on sidewalks, Babb left her house even earlier, knowing that pushing Daysha’s stroller would be slow going.
“And she never complained,” Brady said.
Babb worries about affording “everyday stuff.” When she talks about buying things Daysha needs, Babb states her dilemma matter-of-factly, without a hint of self-pity in her voice.
“She has eczema and the stuff she needs, like Aveeno soap, there is no way I can spend $6 for special soap,” she said.
To remind her why she does it all, Babb carries a photo wherever she goes.
It shows Babb as a much paler, thinner woman with a tight smile and her premature baby daughter in her lap.
“I thought I looked good,” she said. “I thought I took good care of my kids, and they were fed and clean, but I never had time with her.”
The Scotts
James and Alicia Scotts’ court histories profile the lifestyle of a meth addict. Both have done prison time and been convicted of multiple crimes.
James Scott, 31: Collection agency lawsuits, drunken driving, possession of drugs, felon in possession of a firearm and interfering with police, among others.
Alicia Scott, 28: Identity theft, possession and delivery of drugs, custodial interference and car thefts.
“I really didn’t have any place to stay, and a car would give me transportation and shelter,” Alicia explained.
Long before they met and married, the Scotts were using methamphetamine. Both were 19 when they started, and both say they have family histories with addiction issues.
Alicia had her first child, William Morgan, when she was a teenager. Months after the baby was born, his father introduced her to meth on a camping trip, she said.
Soon after, the two were addicts.
“Obviously when you start doing meth, your marriage is going to fail,” Alicia said. After the divorce, she used alcohol, marijuana and methamphetamine to deaden her emotions.
Alicia had two more children, a boy with another man and a girl with William’s father. She said she generally stayed sober during her pregnancies.
After he started using, James said he sold drugs to support his habit. He moved from Sweet Home to Bend to get away from his drug buddies, but he soon found new friends to use with.
James said he spent a lot of time running from police, and court records show he was in and out of jail.
The Scotts met in July 2002 and three months later, James went to prison for illegal possession of a firearm. Alicia said she took over selling drugs for James. She turned her three kids over to her mother and lived on the streets, she said.
By the time James got out of prison in the fall of 2003, Alicia was locked up on drug charges.
“We never knew each other sober other than when we were incarcerated, and that was through the mail,” she said. “And you could tell through the handwriting that the other person was using.”
When the two were out of jail, they tried to quit using drugs.
The cycle
For the Scotts, it always seemed to start up with drinking.
The two would quit using for a while, then go to a bar to play pool and have a few drinks.
“The next thing you know, we’re calling old people and we’re back in it,” Alicia said.
Then, in 2004, she went to prison for DUII and lost her children.
“I realized I had been choosing him and the bag over my kids, and I realized I had to choose the Lord first and then my kids,” she said.
In prison, she took parenting programs, got into treatment and cut off her relationship with James.
He kept using and was sent to jail for violating his probation.
The two were released on the same day — July 8, 2005.
Alicia refused to reconcile with James and, by November, had her kids back.
James decided to get clean.
“My motivation at that time was to get back with the woman I loved, get our family back in order and get my life together,” he said.
He stayed clean for 10 months but, shortly before their April 2006 wedding day, relapsed. By the time they got married, the two were shooting meth again.
During a trip back from Christmas Valley in June 2006, James wrapped their truck around a tree.
“We hadn’t used that morning but we were coming down,” he said.
The kids were in the back seat and, somehow, escaped unharmed.
The couple still didn’t stop using drugs.
They volunteered to host Thanksgiving that year but got high and went to a bar instead.
“We were arguing and then we started laughing,” James said. “Then we wondered what we were laughing about, and we looked at each other and said, 'Is this the way we want to live our lives?’”
They sobered up the next day — Nov. 23, 2007. The two had been attending church for a while and sought help there.
Then they heard about drug court.
Recovery
The couple went and watched a few drug court sessions, held every Monday, and then decided to sign up.
“I didn’t have the resources (to quit), I didn’t know how to do it,” Alicia said. “I was doing it on my own, and recovery wasn’t meant to be done alone.”
Now, she said, the couple has a support network and the ability to leave behind “old people, old places and old things.”
The two say that turning their lives over to God has been essential to their success.
James has a full-time job delivering sheet rock and roofing, and the couple now has a 5-month-old son named Elijah.
Drug court has helped the couple to move into a larger rental unit on Bend’s near east side.
On Monday, Elijah swayed in a rocker seat with speakers that played synthesized classical music.
Alicia cooked dinner in a cramped kitchen as two parakeets in a corner cage chirped and sang.
And, despite his strong faith and certainty that they’ll succeed in staying sober, James said the couple still faces challenges.
“It’s harder now because I have to be responsible and pay my bills and catch up and take care of the wreckage of the past,” he said. “I have to make sure that God is first, family is second, job is third, and everything else is in the past. That is God’s grace.”
Brady said that Babb and the Scotts’ graduation is one of the most significant accomplishments that each of them have reached in their lives.”
Now, Brady said, they are expected to start an alumni group. They will mentor those still on the journey.
Cindy Powers can be reached at 617-7812 or cpowers@bendbulletin.com.
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