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I would like to tell you about Jo. Jo is not her real name but the story is true. When Jo was a little girl her mother left. Her father loved Jo and tried his best to raise her. Overall he did a good job. As Jo grew up she became very close to her dad.

One day her mom came back into her life and took her father to court for custody. She won. The father was devastated. Jo didn’t want to go. She ran away a couple of times to land on her old home’s doorstep. The police would come and take her away, back to her mother.

Jo’s mom didn’t really love Jo, but she did love the child support checks. She exposed Jo to drugs and men. Jo grew up to become a beautiful young woman.

One day her father asked her to come over and spend the holiday with him. She loved her father, but had plans to go out that night. She said she would be there the next day. After a night of partying she went to her dad’s house. She found him froze to death in the house after the heat was shut off. He had been drinking to the point that when he passed out, he never woke up.

Jo decided that getting married would end this life of sorrow and hardship. After she was married she had two boys. Jo was a good mom. Her husband started abusing her. She stayed with him for the sake of the children. One day a couple of federal investigators came to her home. They had questions and wanted answers. She was shocked to learn that her husband was going to be charged with molesting two little girls that lived in the neighborhood. "No way, that can’t be," she insisted. Imagine the shock she felt when her husband admitted to it and bragged how he was going to do the same to his boys.

Jo ran. At first she had the boys with her. She did not want to give her husband visitation even though it was supervised. After he went to prison she couldn’t afford the house anymore. She and her boys were dumped into the street.

It didn’t take long to realize that she wouldn’t be able to keep the boys with her. Jo gave one son to her mother and the other to a friend. It would only be a short while she thought. She thought wrong.

I met her in a homeless camp. It was cold and she had on a light boy’s coat. She cried when she told me her son had given it to her knowing she was sleeping in the woods. Her son went to school without a coat that week.

As darkness fell on the camp, I was glad it was too dark to film. Her story was so tragic. I listened and she explained how one event lead to another causing a spiral that she couldn’t get out of. As we talked, her beauty impressed me. She might have been a model, I thought, if things would have been different.

Here is the case of a young girl that just wanted a normal life. She fell through the cracks in the system.

This is brief excerpt from the book Homeless in the Land of Liberty.

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