by Ansley Allgood
When we are little kids, we learn to idolize our parents for they are the people we look up to, the people who protect us. We learn that South Carolina is one of the best places to live. That the state will always have our best interests in mind. Throughout my childhood I clung to those ideals, especially the ones about my parents. My dad was the best. He bought me whatever I wanted and took me to movies my mom wouldn’t allow me to see. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect father. I was wrong.
I was a kid, a kid growing up with divorced parents. I was naïve and desperately wanted to believe that my dad could do no wrong. As I grew older, I was unable to ignore the berating of my mother and the constant screaming sessions that he labeled as “venting.”
I never understood why Dad would scream at me to the point that his face turned fiery red, and why his spit would fly onto me in big wet globs. I never understood how he could flip from being my loving father one second to a grueling monster the next. Nonetheless, I still loved him.
Due to Dad’s emotional, and sometimes physical, abuse, my mother took him to court. At my age, I didn’t want to accept my dad’s behavior. I defended his actions until I was mentally drained. My eyes that had once been so full of light were now dimmed by the truth of my world. Failing to advocate for myself and ignoring my own feelings caused an immense amount of anxiety in me, a child who had once been an outgoing, carefree spirit. I desperately needed a lawyer, a judge, anyone with some ounce of power to save me.
Eventually, I started hating visits with my dad. I stopped believing in him, stopped believing in the man that I once loved so dearly. I loathed him. So, for the first time ever, I responded to my feelings and refused to see him.
Within a couple of months, I was pressured by court officials to continue visiting him. I was told that if I continued refusing to see him that, in return, my mother would be thrown in jail. I was devastated. I couldn’t bear the thought of my mother, the only person who had ever advocated for me, going to prison, so I simply accepted my fate.
During this distressing time, a harsh reality of South Carolina was revealed to me. That the state did not always have its people’s best interests in mind, for if it had, I wouldn’t be going to my abuser’s home.
After my soul had been crushed into minute little specs, I thought that I would be doomed to this cycle of abuse forever. As my nightmares started to become my reality, one person heard my cries: she was a judge.
A judge was going to allow me to speak to her! Hope started to trickle back inside my heart. Instead of turning down my pleas, she agreed to listen to me. After she did, she suspended visitation with my father.
For the first time in my life, in that judge’s private chambers, I felt heard. I realized that the Family Court wasn’t all bad, just extremely flawed. I realized a big issue within our great state of South Carolina. I realized that children are indeed not viewed the same as humans. That because of their age, they are not valued; that because they’re not legal adults, they’re subjected to legal parental contact, no matter what that contact is like. Abused children have to turn eighteen to escape. They will never experience a normal childhood, for their innocence has been stripped.
As of today, the threat of having to go back to Dad’s house is always looming in my mind. I am still bound by a court order to have nightly calls with him, in which he proceeds to constantly remind me that I will eventually be back in his care, whether I want to or not. The justification for these calls, according to the court, is simply because he has a right to me by blood. I dread the day that I might have to return to him. I can only hope that my childhood will end as soon as possible so I can gain some control over my life. For if I continue in this childlike state, the South Carolina Family Court will never acknowledge me as a human being.
About Ansley Allgood, honorable mention
Ansley Allgood is a junior at Midland Valley High School in Graniteville, where Regina Turner is her English 101 teacher. The daughter of Melissa Johnson, Ansley plans to go to college and become a family lawyer. She is involved in her school’s debate team, academic team, American Sign Language Club, National Honor Society, and Beta Club.