House Of Innocents
HOUSE OF INNOCENTS
My name is Dennis Collins. My story is about my life as an abused child and foster kid. In my personal narrative I talk about how I made it to where I am now. I also talk about how I was abused as a child and moved around a lot. It took a toll on me as a kid because I did not know where I belonged in life until I got older.
Have you ever felt like you didn’t care about your life? Or that you wanted to go into a corner and crawl into a ball?
When I was six years old, I was put into foster care with my little sister. I was put into foster care because me, my little sister, and my mom were beaten by our step dad to the point where we had bruises on our back, arms, and our faces. My mom had our baby brother in her stomach when we were being beaten. Our step dad would hit my mom in her stomach with a hammer while she was pregnant and told us if we ever told the police that he would kill all of us.
Every time my step dad came home from work I would be scared out of my life for myself, my mom, and my sister because I didn’t want my step dad to hurt us anymore. One day my mom took me and my sister to our aunties house for Sunday dinner. Our mom told her what our step dad had been doing to us and made her promise not to tell the police. The next day, my mom took me and my sister to her job.
My mom’s friend knew about our situation and the next thing I knew, there were ambulances and police officers there. They were coming for me and my sister! I tried to grab my sister and run back to my mom, but the cops grabbed me and my sister and put us in the back of the ambulance and shut the door. When the ambulance drove off, I thought I was never going to see my mom again. When me and my sister got to the children’s hospital, the doctors checked our bodies and said that we were severely injured. We stayed in the hospital for two weeks.
I had to get six stitches in my leg because I got cut when my step dad was beating me. After me and my sister got out of the hospital, we went to a foster care system called the Home of the Innocents in Louisville, Kentucky. I was 605.0 miles away from my home in Pennsylvania. I didn’t even know anybody in Louisville. When me and my sister got to the Home of the Innocents, we were scared.
All of the other kids were staring at us like we had done something wrong. None of them talked to us besides this one boy named Jack. He was very nice to me and my sister and was the only person that didn’t treat us like strangers. We stayed at the place for about three months before me and my sister got the news: we were going to our first foster home!
We were leaving that same day. When me and my sister were packing up our things, one of the kids called us over to the cafeteria. When we got there, all of the lights were off and I couldn’t see anybody.
That’s when the lights turned on and all the kids yelled, “Congratulations on finding a home!” Me and my sister were very surprised because we thought that they didn’t like us.
When we got to our foster home, this lady came up to us and said, “Hi, I’m your foster mom.” The house was huge and it had a big backyard. When we got in the house, our foster mom showed me and my sister to our bedrooms. My bedroom was big and I had my own TV. My sister had a TV in her room, too. Our foster mom had a son named Alan. He was 20 years old.
One month later, I got into trouble when I stole a bag of chips from the kitchen. My foster mom asked me why I did it and I said I didn’t know. My sister and I had to go to another home because of what I did. I didn’t do any better at the next house. I got into trouble again for stealing, but this time I had stolen some money from my foster mom’s purse.
The next foster home me and my sister went to did not play about me and my stealing problem. They asked the foster care system about getting me a therapist, but that didn’t work either because I kept stealing.
Three foster homes later, my new foster dad got a call from the foster care system. The call was about our new baby brother. The system wanted us to come over and see our new brother for the first time. When I first held my brother in my arms, I got emotional because he reminded me of my birth mom. Our little baby brother couldn’t live with us because he had to be potty trained.
After we had left the building, our foster dad told me and my sister that he couldn’t take care of us because we were too hard for him to handle. The next home was very different. It wasn’t as big as the other homes were and the foster mom was very strict. She knew about my stealing problem so she put up everything that she thought I would steal. She had a movie theater in her living room with a surround sound system. She had a son that had special needs and if there was too much noise in the house, he would start screaming and yelling.
One year later, our foster mom got a call from the foster system about our baby brother. They said that our foster mom was allowed to bring him to the foster home. I was so excited that I started to dance around the house and the next day our baby brother was there.
Five days later, my sister and I were playing with my baby brother when all of a sudden, he started to scream. Then my foster mom’s son started to yell. Then that’s when it happened; he slapped his mom in the face! Me, my sister and brother had to leave because of what happened. The foster care system said that we would be living with a lady named Mrs. Marcia Collins.
When me and my siblings got to the foster home, an old lady came out and greeted us. I didn’t know how she was supposed to take care of us because she was like 60 or 61 years old.
I’m not going to lie, it was the best foster home we had been to, but when I went to sleep that night, I had a dream about my mom.
In my dream, my step dad had broken into our new house and killed my little sister and my brother in front of me. It seemed so real. And then I woke up and I was sweating like I had just ran a marathon...
Thank you for sharing!