One last chance

RALEIGH -- The hardened addicts and alcoholics file into Wake District Court Judge Kristin Ruth's courtroom and recite a revolving list of excuses about why they aren't paying their long-overdue child support.

They have criminal records and no one will hire them. No car to get to a job. They had to pay the electric bill.

Roosevelt Pulley Jr. was one of those. He owed $40,000 in unpaid child support to the two mothers of his seven children, ages 26 to 9. But crack always came first in Pulley's life.

"Crack became my lover," he said. "That's all I wanted to do."

Ruth, who presides over a court dedicated to child support cases, could throw Pulley and the others in jail -- and she has by the hundreds.

But Ruth takes a chance on a few of them. She offers a place in an unusual and unproven program aimed at drug-dependent parents who rarely paid their court-ordered child support.

It's a chance to live clean, get a job and experience what might be more satisfying than drugs -- the pride of supporting their children.

"Everybody doesn't want to be locked up and classified as deadbeat," said Michael Grant, 44, an alcoholic who has been with the program from its start last fall.

Ruth, who refuses to use the term "deadbeat dad," thinks tapping that kind of attitude can break a hopeless cycle of drugs, jail, children left without a parent, and parents left estranged and ashamed.

The program is thought to be the only one of its kind in the nation. Judges from around the country sat in Ruth's Wake County courtroom this spring to see why, and how, she has decided so much time and resources should be dedicated to a small group of people that many find it easier to give up on.

Almost everyone else had given up on Pulley, and he knew this could be his last chance.

After 20 years of crack dictating and destroying his life, he signed up to stay clean, find a job and go to intensive group therapy three times a week while wearing an ankle bracelet for an electronic house arrest program.

"You got to be tired of being tired," he said.

He was tired -- and that made him a perfect candidate for Ruth's program.

Some successes

It wasn't as if Ruth didn't have enough to do. The Wake County child support enforcement department estimates it has 18,035 cases it follows. In about 5,400 of those, payments aren't regularly made.

The judge's program, run on a $67,800 grant with at least a half dozen professionals working in it, has had 34 people join since November. Twelve have completed the program, and two are still in it.

Ruth isn't disappointed with the low completion rates. She sees success in stories such as that of Jeff Tart, who proudly told Ruth that his teenage son recently saw him for the first time in his life without a beer in his hand.

James Mims, another program participant, abandoned his daily diet of marijuana and now works as a baker at St. Augustine's College. Child support payments will automatically be taken from his wages.

Ruth looks for men, and sometimes women, in their late 30s or 40s who seem to be tiring of their lifestyles of drug or alcohol abuse.

"These guys have been around the block," she said. "They don't know if they can keep going."

In her courtroom two months after the start of the program, Ruth called 11 men and one woman to the front. John Mark Batchelor, who led the therapy portion of the program, reported on their progress.

The group was nervous, but the air in the courtroom was congratulatory as caseworkers, attorneys and even audience members applauded program participants. Ruth calls participants into court once every two months to check on their progress.