M could be pregnant.

Left to her own devices in the past we’ve found her dressed in wild princess outfits talking to herself in front of a neighbor’s farm on a blind curve in the road where people speed without thinking. At the village school she attended, she used to wear such outlandish outfits that she became a distraction to the kids in special education and a laughingstock amongst the “normal” kids. The teacher that year begged us to tighten our reins which I gladly did. It had taken every ounce of patience to allow her to do it her way like her misguided social worker had suggested.

Her go-to style as she has matured and has been given unlimited access to YouTube at school is that of a child prostitute. At one point a few of M’s teachers at the village school helped her defy the dress code we had instituted with M’s new therapist. The therapist understood what the teachers willfully refused to believe. Allowing M to dress in a comically provocative way was setting M up to be a sexual victim (or predator) because this acting out in itself was re-triggering her sexual trauma. (No therapist wanted to tackle the sexual side of her complex trauma which meant that it was and still is actively causing her great harm).

The teachers let her hide the clothing we sent her with in a cubby and reminded her to put those clothes on at the end of the day to avoid trouble with us.

This is not my theory. When I arrived early one day to pick M up, M wasn’t the only one with a red face when she had to retrieve her clothes from the “cool” teacher’s classroom. At the next school meeting the teachers who had even donated their own dangling earrings and some make up were conspicuously absent. Another teacher admitted that she allowed M to use an Apple tablet with internet access on many occasions despite the administrators having promised us that she would be kept away from electronics after a number of incidents where M tried to contact adults through email and watched terrifying videos that caused weeks and months of traumatic acting out at home.

And here is the horrible truth about attachment issues in kids who have been this severely traumatized: They become experts at triangulation.

These kids juggle a fake and charming persona in public while smearing their primary caregivers at home. This is extremely common, but since the kids are such experts at this people find it hard to believe until the kid, after months of manipulation no longer has use for the teacher who has now invested their ego and heart into the victim student.

Just like that, M sold every one of those teachers down the river. We could have made a lot of trouble, but because we liked most of the staff we chose not to. Our misguided object at the time was to help them understand something they just couldn’t because their ideology was so infused with the victim mentality and savior complex (something I know a little about).

There are many stories to go back to, to mull over, but for today I will tell you something fresh. I will lay out how M ended up in a residential facility after five years of being annoying and conniving and sweet and lovable at home. But not now.

A few months ago, M was taken to Planned Parenthood because they take Medicaid and M had a yeast infection due to poor hygiene, high carb/ high sugar diet and the meds she’s on (the meds I will discuss again in another post). Since M is 16 the law says she is old enough to make her own informed decision about birth control (her actual mental age is somewhere between 4-7). Mind you, she was going to be examined for a yeast infection. Also keep in mind that the doctors fully understand that the kids who go to this residential school have limited intellectual abilities and tons of trauma.

The aides are not allowed inside the examining room and can offer no real counseling. For a highly suggestable kid like M, the leading questions asked by the PP staff sent her in the obvious direction. They “sold” her birth control (despite the fact that the hormonal changes in some cases can cause further emotional disturbances especially with the cocktail of drugs M has ended up back on). In M’s mind the discussion with a professional about “safe” sex made her more inclined to pursue sex, just as when M was taught about doing drugs and suddenly felt like it was predetermined that she must do drugs.

My husband and I have conflicted feelings about birth control as Catholics. Are some people just not valuable? Yet when she told us that she was going on the patch and then the pill we couldn’t help sighing in relief. Before long she told me in her most heartfelt and convincing way, that for religious reasons and to please us she was going off birth control.

I knew there was more to the story and spoke with her counselor who is reaching her own tipping point of battle fatigue with M.

“Oh, no. That’s not the reason. She told the nurse that she wants to have babies with a boy in her cottage.”

The boy is quite low functioning. M has built a track record in the last year. She grooms boys and then when they feel free to do something to her (with her) she rats on them and plays victim. She is a victim of life, yes, but these boys deserve fairness. The staff was surprised when I took a boy’s side once after M admitted to inviting a boy to touch her inappropriately and then telling on him.

“I want him to pay,” she’d said.

Yesterday we visited M despite her breaking every agreement set up by the residential school she now attends. It never seems right to leave a kid to celebrate holidays in an institution.

So now it’s Easter. As a spiritual exercise I bought her tacky leggings with brightly colored t-shirts and sweaters in place of the candy because she didn’t want to have to share her basket with housemates. I was feeling pretty generous for buying her, not the things I would dress her in, but stuff she would love. What did it matter? We wouldn’t have to see her wearing any of it. We needed to stop being so controlling. Right?

She loved everything — especially the neon-colored eye make-up. We had a really nice lunch. On the way home I said I did miss her sometimes. We had some sweet memories from before the events that occurred just before the Covid lockdown. She and I had loved exploring historic houses and thrift shops and had a special coffee shop we frequented after therapy each week.

This morning the director of the residential school called.

“There was an incident last night. Seems a boy from the cottage went into her room and they had sex.”

Last week we had a service meeting and the staff had mentioned concerns they had about inappropriate conversations between this boy and M, but that they were keeping them apart. Only today did I find out that M had been trying to convince this boy to run to the woods to have sex and make babies. M had told the staff on many occasions about her desires. This isn’t even the kid that she’s “engaged to” at the school.

The Justice Center has been called in to investigate a possible rape.

M is at the ER being examined and a boy who can’t tie his shoes may be brought up on rape charges.

There are cameras. The truth will come out. There are night staff who say M was out of her room a few times. This could all be a hoax — or M could be pregnant as I write this. It surprises me still how much people underestimate M. She cannot keep herself safe no matter how many trips to Planned Parenthood.

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