Pubdate: Sun, 13 Mar 2005
Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
Copyright: 2005 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc.
Contact:  http://www.journalnow.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/504
Author: Monte Mitchell, Journal Reporter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Note: The Journal does not publish letters from writers outside its daily 
home delivery circulation area.

KIDS SNARED IN DEADLY ATMOSPHERE OF METH LABS

Besides Peril To Health, They Are Further Victimized When Parents Are
Arrested

Jocelyn was 13 years old and had a broken ankle that hadn't been
treated for two days.

She was lying in the bed of a pickup next to her mother and another
woman when authorities barreled onto the Ashe County property to serve
a search warrant for a methamphetamine lab.

The search turned up evidence of a lab and 15 guns, many of them
loaded. Jocelyn asked members of the SWAT team not to destroy her
homework, which was on a computer inside a trailer on the property.

Five months later, in September 2003, authorities again raided the
trailer. That time, Jocelyn and her two sisters were found living in a
tent because social workers had declared the trailer unfit for
children. The girls' father, Richard A. Bare, had run an electrical
cord to the tent so they could watch television.

Once again, evidence was found that a meth lab had been run
there.

The third raid was in February 2004. This time, the girls had moved to
a camper parked next to the trailer's front porch. An open-flame
burner was being used to heat the camper, and dog feces were on the
floor. The family was getting water from a hose connected to an
outbuilding where investigators say meth was made.

The girls had symptoms of emphysema; authorities suspect that it was
from exposure to a meth lab. Richard Bare and Kimberley Bare got
active sentences after the third raid.

Jocelyn's story and others like it are familiar to SBI agents,
sheriff's deputies and social workers in North Carolina's mountains,
where children have been found at about 25 percent of meth labs.

It's a world of deadly toxins. It's a pot of chemicals in a sink next
to a baby's bottle. It's a place where children unknowingly ingest
methamphetamine through secondhand exposure, and often show the same
signs as users - sleeplessness, lack of hunger and
irritability.

These children eat, sleep and do schoolwork in homes that
law-enforcement agents won't enter without protective gear.

Last year, authorities found 124 children at meth labs in North
Carolina. As of Wednesday, 28 children had been found at meth labs
this year.

Kimberley Renee Bare, Jocelyn's mother, said that her daughters were
never in danger. She disputes the description of their living
conditions, which were provided by an agent from the State Bureau of
Investigation and an investigator from the Ashe County Sheriff's Office.

But she pleaded guilty to felony charges connected to methamphetamine
production and served five months in jail.

She was also ordered to perform community service as part of a plea
bargain that dropped child-abuse charges. Richard Bare is now in prison.

Jocelyn and her sisters now live with relatives in another
state.

Watauga County and the mountains have been the center of the state's
war on meth, but SBI experts say that they can see the drug moving
like a weather front into more populated areas.

The arrest of parents for running a drug lab is the biggest reason
that children are placed in foster care in Watauga County, according
to officials with the county's social-services department.

Because of privacy concerns, their names aren't released, and
circumstances about the children almost never become public.

That changed this year when an Amber alert put two faces on national
television. Authorities said that James Paul Chambers, 2, and his baby
sister, Breanna Genevieve Chambers, were with their foster parents on
Jan. 15, when their biological parents kidnapped the children at gunpoint.

The children were in foster care because James Canter and Alisha Ann
Chambers had been charged in connection with operating a
methamphetamine lab.

Chambers had been arrested and was out on bond. A warrant had been
issued for Canter, but he hadn't been found.

After the kidnapping, authorities in North Carolina, Tennessee and
Virginia conducted a four-day search before a tip led them to recover
the children safely in White Top, Va. Canter and Chambers were arrested.

Through her attorney, Chambers has apologized. She said she doesn't
believe that the gun was loaded and that she is sure that Canter would
not have used it.

"I love my children, Paul and Breanna, more than anything in the
world, and it was this love which drove me to do what I did on January
15, 2005," Chambers said in a statement. "I knew that regardless of
whatever changes I made in my life the Department of Social Services
would never allow me to see Paul and Breanna again, and I simply could
not bear never again being able to see or hold my children."

Sheriff Mark Shook of Watauga County said that the trailer's kitchen
was filthy and had meth-making equipment soaking in dirty dishwater.

"In the next bin of the sink, here's the baby bottles," Shook said.
"It was pitiful. Really pitiful. It would make you cry just to see
that humans live in that condition."

Eller contends that there was no meth lab in the trailer where Canter
lived but that evidence of a lab was found in an abandoned trailer
across the road.

Canter's attorney, Vince Gable, said that his client didn't live at
the trailer either, but would sometimes meet Chambers there. He also
said that Canter denies being the source of the meth-lab evidence
found at the abandoned trailer.

"Methamphetamine is a serious problem, but there's a hysteria around,
and it's so hard for anyone to get a fair shake," Gable said. "If
anyone says 'methamphetamines,' all of a sudden they're bad guys, and
that's it."

A trial date has not been set in the case. Both parents remain in
jail.

Jim Atkinson, the director of the Watauga County Department of Social
Services, said that when meth first became a problem, people didn't
know whether touching an exposed child would expose a social worker to
health risks.

For help in figuring out the proper approach, Watauga looked to
Western states, where methamphetamine had been a problem for years. In
turn, many North Carolina counties are looking to Watauga for guidance.

The county has followed a recommendation from the U.S. Department of
Justice to establish a multiagency team. Social workers go on raids if
authorities suspect that a child might be present.

If a child is on the scene and there has been no active meth cooking
recently, social workers typically may clean up the child with baby
wipes. If the child is from a site where meth cooking has just
occurred, they take the child to a decontamination trailer that
includes a shower.

Social workers now know that they aren't likely to be poisoned by
touching a child with methamphetamine in his system.

The N.C. Division of Social Services and the N.C. Association of
County Directors of Social Services have worked together to develop
guidelines about what to do if a child is found in a meth lab.

"Do you let children take their belongings with them, or are all their
belongings contaminated?" asked Karen Taylor George, the association's
executive director. "For a child already leaving their home, do they
get to take their blankie or their stuffed bunny?"

The answers depend on the situation. Social-services agencies now have
new guidelines to help make decisions based on specific situations.

In spring, the state is scheduling training for social workers from
the state's 100 counties to learn about North Carolina's new policy on
dealing with drug-endangered children.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says that methamphetamine
endangers children more than any other controlled substance, since
they are often neglected or abused. They can be exposed to open drug
use, toxic chemicals, hazardous waste, fires and explosions.

"With meth, you throw everything out the window that you've known"
about working with families with problems, Atkinson said. "Because of
the way the drug becomes the focus, the drug becomes everything. The
desire is so great. They will give up their children in order to keep
doing it. I don't know of anything that has that strong a grip, not
even alcohol. Methamphetamine is drug-affected thinking at its worst."

Methamphetamine is a powerfully addictive stimulant that deceives
people into thinking that they have limitless stamina while it drains
the body of energy. The euphoria gives way to depression, brain damage
and other problems.

It is made using a chemical process to convert pseudoephedrine found
in over-the-counter medications. Recipes can be found on the Internet.
Law-enforcement officers like to joke that any idiot can make meth,
but most people learn the four-hour "cook" from someone who already
knows how.

The lab is often a pot on a kitchen stove, two-liter soda bottles,
Mason jars, hot plates and Pyrex cookware. The rest of the house is
often filthy, as housekeeping gives way to addiction.

The chemicals produce toxic fumes and vapors, and low-level exposure
can produce headaches, nausea and dizziness. Exposure to high levels
can produce chest pain, coughing, chemical burns and death.

Particles from secondhand meth smoke settle on tables, high chairs,
pacifiers and baby bottles. A study by a Colorado researcher found
that 35 percent of children living in homes where meth is made test
positive for traces of the drug in their system.

Rick Hetzel, the SBI's site-safety officer for the Northwestern North
Carolina Methamphetamine Task Force, has been to more than 100 meth
labs.

In Ashe County, he saw a 50-pound cylinder of ammonia chained in a
child's bedroom. The gas would be deadly if inhaled.

In Alexander County, he saw meth-lab components stuffed in a duffel
bag under a child's bed.

When officers arrive at a suspected meth lab, a SWAT team goes in
first. Each officer is clad in a Nomex suit and self-contained
breathing apparatus, with weapons ready. Once the scene is clear, a
chemist and an agent enter wearing full Hazmat gear and a breathing
apparatus.

Hetzel said he would never consider entering a lab in street clothes.
"Not in a million years," he said. "Would I ever put a child in that
environment? Never. It's ridiculous."

He says he thinks that children accept what their parents
do.

"They don't even know to be in distress," he said. "To them, this is
normal. We don't even know what the future holds for them. Are they
going to develop cancer when they're 14 years old from living in a
clandestine lab - cancer they wouldn't have had if not exposed to this
from ages 5 to 9?"

The cost for cleanup of a meth-lab site is $1,000 to $50,000. But
cleanup involves only getting rid of the lab. It doesn't include
decontaminating walls, carpets and furniture. And it doesn't answer
the question of what happens to the kids.

"Once the law-enforcement people have gotten out, where does this
child and her mother go?" Atkinson asked. "They can't go back in that
house. How do you know when it's clean? Who decides that? How do you
measure it? Who pays for it?"

About two-thirds of the children found in Watauga County's meth labs
wind up in foster homes. The county pays $390 to $490 a month for a
family to provide care for a child. DSS is reimbursed for about half
that amount through federal and state payments.

After the January kidnapping, officials with the Watauga Department of
Social Services re-examined policies for providing security, privacy
and anonymity to foster families.

Jocelyn's mother, Kimberley Bare, said she doesn't approve of what
Chambers did to get her children back, but she can understand it.

Bare hasn't seen Jocelyn or her other two daughters in the year since
the last raid. Meth creates a dangerous world for a child and shatters
families, but it doesn't necessarily kill love.

A T-shirt that hangs on the wall of Bare's trailer was made by her
daughters while she was in jail. They mangled the message on a home
computer, but they made it clear enough: "Hppay Mother's Day!"

"I love you and miss you," Jocelyn wrote.

To get to the trailer where the Bares lived with their daughter
requires a drive past a cast-off washing machine, a junked pickup,
storm-drainage pipes, old bicycles and thousands of rusted cans in a
burned pile.

Because authorities say that methamphetamine was manufactured in the
trailer, the children will not be allowed to return there until their
mother finds a new place to live. Bare said that her husband never
made methamphetamine in the trailer, and that the children were never
exposed to health risks.

"I know they weren't," she said. "My children were never around
anything like that."

In the first raid in 2003, authorities seized a 40-gallon tank of
anhydrous ammonia in the trailer's bedroom, according to a search
warrant. The chemical is used in one method of meth production.

"They arrested us the first time -that's when I found out I was
making," Bare said. Authorities say that it would be almost impossible
for an adult to not realize that meth was being produced because it
creates such a mess and smell.

The children had been moved into a tent when authorities raided the
home the second time, and they were in a camper there during a raid in
2004.

Bare said that her children made a game out of living in the tent and
coming to the kitchen window for something to eat.

"They'd come to the window and knock on it," she said. "They thought
they were at a drive-through window."

After five months in the Ashe County Jail, both Bares pleaded guilty
last summer to felony and misdemeanor charges related to manufacturing
methamphetamine. Kimberley Bare was released on time served and
probation. Her husband got two years in prison. He is expected to be
released later this year.

Kimberley Bare knows that if they were arrested now, they both could
receive much longer sentences.

"I thank God they did us when they did, because everybody else is
getting 10 years now," she said.

Authorities are continuing to develop ways to fight the meth problem.
A new state law that went into effect in December adds two years to
the sentence of anyone who has a child at the site of a meth lab.
Authorities in the mountain counties have also started to use federal
charges, which mean faster prosecution and longer sentences.

Bare said she has taught her children to respect the law, but she
doesn't agree with how law-enforcement officers are fighting meth.

"What they're doing is right, but they need to go about it in a
different way," she said. "A lot of it is trial and error, but a lot
of people are getting hurt with the trial and error."

In 1996, The Bare family moved to Ashe County for a new start after
two failed businesses in Kansas. Richard bare had relatives in the
mountains and worked as a temporary employee for state road crews,
Kimberley Bare said.

Her husband started using methamphetamines to self-medicate a sleeping
disorder, she said. "He got addicted. It happens a lot."

She said she had tried meth but didn't like it. "It's not my thing. I
guess it grabs hold of some people. He has a sleeping disorder and it
grabbed him. It really didn't do anything for me."

Once it became an addiction for her husband, "I guess it turned into
trying to make money for the family, too," she said.

Her middle daughter, Jocelyn, then 13, was the only child at home
during the first raid.

Kimberley Bare, 35, disputes an SBI account that says Jocelyn had an
untreated broken ankle. She said that the ankle was sprained, and she
had called the emergency room and was told to keep ice on it.

Now Bare is trying to slowly rebuild her life. She said she hopes that
she has landed a job as a security guard.

It's sometimes harder on the outside than it was in jail, where there
was always electricity and heat, she said, and it's easy for people
who make methamphetamine to return to that life to earn money.

Still, she defends her husband as a good father who would do anything
for his daughters. "He's a good man," she said. "He got into something
he couldn't get away from. It changed him."

She says she wishes her husband well but that she doesn't plan to stay
married to him.

"Drugs change your whole family," Bare said. "It does not matter if
one or both is doing it. It affects everybody. Us parents should be
thinking about the kids and not about what we can do to make money.
DSS and the law should be thinking about the kids, too."

As her children grow up, she worries about their exposure to meth
use.

"I don't want my kids on it," Bare said. "I want them living long and
doing well. God forbid, they get with a man who's doing it.

"Their daddy's a great person, and I hope they find somebody like
their daddy - just without being addicted."
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