Sonja Bilbrey Alamia

300 Children, 300 Stories. Mine is not unique. It's the way I reacted that was different. When you beat a child down mentally and physically, and nobody comes to their rescue, (even though they know what is happening), then sometimes the child has to stop the abuse. My name is Sonja. This is my story.

One day, last summer, my phone rang. When I answered it, I couldn't believe my ears. It was my childhood friend Sarah. I hadn't heard from her in 41 years and yet she still had the same voice that I remembered from so long ago. We were both children from the Turley Children's Home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was one of the few children at the Home that I could confide in. After re-acquainting ourselves, Sarah told me that she was working on a project centering on the Turley Home. She wanted to know if I would or could write a short story about my years at the Home.

When I was about eight years old, my four siblings and I were taken from our grandfather's home by the state of Texas. My mother was out of town when this happened and couldn't do a thing to stop it. I guess you could say it started when my mother remarried 1 year earlier. My Aunt, for some reason, was very jealous because my mother was newly remarried and expecting a baby. My mother was a good mother and deserved better from her sister. But this was not to be.

Two weeks before we were taken, my maternal grandmother was killed in a car accident. My grandfather was driving the car. Even though the accident was not his fault, He blamed himself for the loss of his wife. After the funeral my poor grandfather could barely cope, his wife of forty five years was gone and he was alone.Two weeks after this happened, my new stepfather's mother died. He and my mother had to go to her funeral in another state.

My mother went to her sister, my aunt, and asked her to watch the children so she and my new dad could go to his mother's funeral. My aunt refused, giving my mother only one other person she could go to for help, my grandfather. It had only been two weeks since the accident. My still grieving grandfather was a wreck. He took us and three days later he was only worse. Taking care of five kids is hard no matter who you are and when you're grieving, it makes it impossible.

This is what my aunt was waiting for. She couldn't call the welfare people fast enough. My grandfather was heartbroken that he couldn't stop all that was going to happen .The welfare people came that day and took us all. They put each one of us in a different home. We weren't even allowed to know where the other kids in our family were taken. When my mother came home and found out what her sister had done she couldn't believe it. Welfare had hidden us from her. She and my stepfather could not afford an attorney to fight charges of abandonment. I don't think my mother ever got over this and I know she never forgave her sister.

After school one day and after about two months of being away from my brothers and sisters we were all brought together again at the airport. I never even got a chance to say good-bye to my host family. I loved the family that I was placed with and I felt so sad that I couldn't thank them and tell them that I loved them. I think they loved me too. Maybe it was just too hard saying goodbye. I was really happy to see my brothers and sisters. We were all happy that day for that moment. No one would tell us where we were going. They just put us on the plane and when it landed, we were in Tulsa, Oklahoma! After all these years I still can't believe we were taken away from our mother that day. I had always thought they would give us back to our mom. But after they took us all to another state we all knew it was over and we would never be a family again.

Later that day when we arrived at the Turley Home we were separated again and put in different buildings. It was so sad, we all thought we would be together but that wouldn't be allowed. Boys and girls couldn't be trusted to live together because they might be sexual with each other so we were told. I was only eight years old! What did I know about sex? All I knew was that I missed my brothers and sisters and I wanted us all to be together again. Sex? What is that?

When we were taken to the building that we would live in, we were separated again. We weren't even allowed to live in the same room. Here, we were separated by age. The same thing happened to my brothers, only in a different building. After we were shown our beds, we were then given a job assignment. This was our life now and even though we were separated, we were not alone.

The hardest thing at first was not being able to play with my brothers who lived in another building. My older brother Billy and I were always close in a very special way because we shared the same birthday. He always said I was his birthday present. Without Billy I didn't feel safe and he couldn't be there for me the way he had always been. My oldest sister Gwen took his place. Without her, I don't know how I would have coped.

The kids I felt sorry for were the ones that didn't have brothers and sisters because they were truly alone. Late at night you could hear them crying. There were never any hugs for them. In time, we came to accept the other kids as family and that this was just our lot in life. Maybe life wasn't all bad. After all, we had our very large new family and we had our own baseball team!

When no one was in trouble, all was right with the world. We could play baseball for hours and many days we did just that. We had the best girl baseball player that I have ever seen. This girl, Janis McGee, could throw a ball better, hit the ball harder and run faster than any guy. All said, she was a fabulous ball player. If the pro teams had seen her, they would have signed her up for sure. I always wanted to be like her but no matter how hard I tried I could never measure up. When it came to baseball she was my hero. I always made sure I was on her team! We always won. Playing soccer was a different story. Soccer was my game and there wasn't anyone that could beat me. I was always the first picked and if I hadn't been a girl I would have been the team captain. I loved soccer!

Once a month we would go roller skating at the local skating rink. We all had so much fun. It was one of the few things other than school and church that we could do with outsiders. We always looked forward to that night. We could even hold hands with the boys when we skated and not get into trouble, ooh! We were all in heaven that night of the month. Another thing we did for fun was going to the movies. We would pop our own popcorn, take our blankets and spread them on the ground to watch the movie. It was great fun sitting there in the night watching the movie and the lighting bugs flying all around us. When I think about it today, I can still taste the night air. When and if we got cold we would just huddle together just like sisters because that is what we had become, we were sisters in this together.

Because of the woman that was in charge of our building, Mrs. Wilson, I learned very quickly, (with help from the other girls), to be invisible. First I had to obey all of the rules and do the job they gave me the best that I could and that's what I did. I saw what happened to the girls that couldn't follow the rules and I didn't want that to happen to me. Mrs. Wilson, had this huge paddle with holes in it and when she punished us she showed no mercy. Sometimes the girls could barely walk after she was done with them. I think she was glad that she had this power over us. She wasn't a happy person and seemed happy only when we were unhappy.

After we had been at the home for about a year my Grandminnie died. She was my real father's mother. Well, Mrs. Wilson told my oldest sister Gwen that Grandminnie was Going to Hell! and that �She would burn forever! This shocked Gwen so much that it made her faint. This wouldn't be the last time the house parent would be so cruel to us.

When John F. Kennedy died, none of us were allowed to mourn his death because he was a Catholic and according to Mrs. Wilson, he was going to burn in Hell. People shouldn't tell children these things because we were impressionable, we believed them. Why was Mrs. Wilson so cruel? Where were the people that were supposed to protect us? We had to learn to protect each other and that�s what we all did, we protected each other.

Hey, let's talk about the food for a moment. How would you like to have bugs in your food every day of your life? Well, we did! There were Boll Weevils in our breakfast cereal, Mmm! We all got pretty good at shuffling the bugs to the side of the bowl and depositing them there without Mrs. W. seeing us. You like Peanut Butter? You like Spam? OK, try eating it every day for seven (7) years of your life! We had to. For five of the seven years there, we drank milk from our own cows. So what is wrong with that? Farm fresh milk is great, right? The boys at the home were given the responsibility of milking the cows for us. Every day our supply of milk would arrive with a layer of bugs, hay, dirt and who knows what else, floating on the top. We did our best to strain as much of the crud out as we could, but guess what? The State government finally stepped in and wanted the milk inspected. The Home beat them to the punch by contracting a milk delivery just before the milk would have so to speak,hit the Fan.

To me the older girls were the lucky ones, they got to go on dates and they could even comb their own hair the way they wanted. I don't know why I couldn't fix my own hair, but until the age of twelve Mrs. Wilon made me wear Shirley Temple ringlets! When I wanted to change my hair style, I was told that I was trying to grow up too fast. That's when the trouble started for me. I wasn't being bad, but that was how I was treated. After all, I only wanted to be like the other girls at school. So, in defiance of Mrs. Wilson, I went and got a hair cut and perm. I was on cloud nine for a little while anyway. That seemed to be the day Mrs. Wilson turned on me. From that day on, nothing I did was ever right.

The next day Mrs. Wilson said that I didn't do my daily assigned job right. So she made me wet my hair before I went to bed. She knew my hair would be all frizzy and that this would humiliate me the next day. After I went to bed I carefully wound my hair around my fingers and laid carefully on it. I didn't move all night long. The next day my hair actually looked like I had put it in rollers. When Mrs. Wilson saw me, she actually made me put my head under water again! I had to go to school with frizzy hair. In my second class I broke down crying. I was so embarrassed. The teacher took me out of class and let me spend the rest of the day in the school office, where no one could see me. I'm sorry that I can't remember that teacher's name, but if I could, I would thank her today for being so kind to me then.

Not long after this, my appendix burst at school. I had to go to the hospital to have it removed in an emergency operation. I was taken to this old run down red brick building that was about three stories high and across the street from buildings that had flashing lights on them. I think they might have been restaurants. I don't believe they took me to a real hospital. The janitor told me that he owned the building. He was really funny and always made me laugh with his jokes. This was not good for my stitches! I found out later that there had been a small hole in my appendix and that poison had leaked into my intestines. Mrs. Wilson knew that I was sick that day, yet she made me school. I could have died. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment.

My sister Gwen came to the hospital but they wouldn't let her see me. They only showed my appendix to her. Why would they do that? Why would they bring her to see me and not let her see me? To this day I can't figure this one out.

When I went back to the home I had to stay in bed for about a week. None of the girls could stand being in the room with me because I smelled so bad. The poison was coming out of a small hole that they had left open for drainage. Gwen said she would never eat fruit cocktail again because my appendix looked like the green grapes that are in fruit cocktail. Gwen was so funny about this and to this day she still won't eat fruit cocktail!

Soon after this I turned thirteen and I started to notice boys. They were nice but different. All I wanted to do was talk to them (nothing more) but of course Mrs. Wilson made it ALL ABOUT SEX. I get so mad about this even today. If we as kids could have just talked to each other then maybe we could have handled some of the situations that came up later in life a little better. I had a lot of problems with men because of the way we were taught. I even married the first boy I had sex with because I was told that no one would ever want me if I wasn't a virgin anymore. This is what I was taught by Mrs. Wilson and this was wrong. It almost ruined my life.

One night when we went skating I met a boy. He was so nice and we wanted to talk some more, but the night was over. It would be another month before we would get the chance to go skating again and he was going back home to New York. The next night I snuck out to see him. We had a great time that night. It was the first time I was ever alone with a boy and yes, we kissed, but that was all. I still believed somewhere deep in my mind that boys were bad and only wanted one thing.

It was raining when he dropped me off later that evening. When I tried to go back inside, I found the window locked! Gwen and Sarah came to the window crying. They were so scared for me but they couldn't let me in. I was in so much trouble and I knew it. I was wet, cold and alone for the first time ever.

That would be a night of hell. I had no one to call, so I just started walking. It was raining so hard that night and it was so cold, but fear kept me going. After walking for a long time, I looked up and saw the outline of a church in the street light. My first thought was to get out of the rain. So I tried the door, it was open and I stepped inside. It was so dark and I didn't know where anything was, so I just stood there getting warm. It felt so good to be out of the rain. Then I heard a sound coming from the dark that made the hair on my arms stand up. It was a sound I will never forget. Low and guttural, it was very close to me in the dark. Now I was scared, wet, cold and not alone! Then, in an instant, I had a very startling realization.

I wasn't inside a church! I was inside someone's home! And there was a watch dog very close to me! My eyes hadn't fully adjusted to the dark yet. All I could do was reach back to feel for the doorknob. Thank goodness I hadn't stepped in very far and I found the knob with the first try. Slowly I turned it and with one quick step I was out of there! I'll never know how big or even what kind of dog was in that room, but I do know that it was going to attack me!

After I got over some of my fear and my legs had stopped shaking I started walking again. The next day around noon I ended up at our church. Finally I felt a little bit safer. I didn't have any money, so I went into a phone booth across the street from the church to make a collect call to one of the people from our church. As I was looking at the phone book, two men came up to the booth knocked on the glass and asked me if I was Sonja. At first I told them that I wasn't. They told me that they were private detectives looking for a girl named Sonja. Then I told them who I was. They took me straight back to the home.

Everyone was in school when I was returned and I just knew that with no one around I would be beaten badly. But Mrs. Wilson had other ideas on how she wanted to humiliate me. I was taken to the doctor's office for an exam. They, the home staff, wanted to see if I had been sexually active. Mrs. Wilson desperately wanted to be in the exam room so she could be the first to point the finger at the sinner. Thank goodness they wouldn't let her in!

What made it even worse was the fact that the doctor was a man! After all I had been told about how bad men were, there was a MAN checking between my legs! I was so scared. When the exam was over, the doctor turned to the nurse and said, I knew she was innocent. Then, we went out to the waiting room where the doctor informed Mrs. Wilson of his findings. The look of disappointment was all over her face. I felt vindicated.

The next year went by so slowly. No matter how hard I tried to stay out of trouble, I couldn't. One evening another girl and I were on the side of the house taking care of a cat that Mrs. Wilson had bought. She said she paid $200.00 for it, but she would never let it out of the cage that it lived in. The poor thing couldn't walk because the hair under its arm was so tangled. We would reach in and pet it until it rolled over on its back then we would cut the hair loose so that it could walk. Why would anyone treat a cat this way? While we were doing this we heard someone call us but we just wanted to take care of the cat so that it could walk. We should have gone to see what the person wanted instead.

When we were done we went inside only to find everyone at the table already eating. Mrs. Wilson stood up and told us to go to her room. We were so scared because we didn't know what it was that we had done wrong. Mrs. Wilson surely wouldn't beat us for just being late for supper, would she? Well, she showed us no mercy that day and as usual, we got beat for no real reason. The poor girl that was with me could hardly walk after that beating. Later that evening, Mrs. Wilson accused us of riding off on horses with some boys that we didn't even know and hadn't even seen. She was always looking for an excuse to beat us and there was nobody we could go to for help.

This next incident introduces Mr. Wilson. Time goes by very slowly when you constantly live in fear. One day I was taking a nap and was awakened in a very weird way. Mr. Wilson had his hand under my dress. He was trying to feel my privates. It scared me so much that I jumped up and ran from the room. Later that week Mr. Wilson's glasses were broken. One of the girls told me that he had chased her under her bed and that she had kicked him in the face to get away from him. After that I stayed as far away from him as I could. Sadly, neither of us told anyone of authority about this pervert at that time.

Some months later I was surprised to find out that Sarah had been begging and bugging Mrs. Wilson to let me go with her on vacation to Arkansas. Sarah had relatives that lived there on a dairy farm. Amazingly I got permission to go. We were driven there by a man who was a "minister", James Caldwell. He was new to our church but not new to the church. (He preached for a rural church near where Sarah's cousins lived.)I think I was told that he was the uncle of the man that Mrs. Wilson's daughter was going to marry. He was so nice to us on the ride there. It was a lot of fun.

After the week was up I had to go back without Sarah because she was going to spend another week there. On the ride home in the darkness of the car something was happening and I didn't know it. Suddenly the the minister, James Caldwell, pulled the car over and in one swift movement he was on me. He took my hand and put it on his penis that he had already taken out of his pants. His other hand went up my blouse. It scared me so much that I burst into tears. I told him that I didn't want to do this! He asked me if I was sure. I told him I was sure and that all I wanted was to go home. He slid back to his side of the car. Then he made me promise that I wouldn't tell anyone. At that time I would have said anything to make him stop. I was shaking with fear all the way back home after that and couldn't even look at him to say goodbye or thanks for the ride home. I just wanted to get away from him and to feel safe.

A week went by and then Sarah came home. I couldn't tell her what had happened because of the shame I felt. I felt that it was my fault, that I had done something to make it happen. Thanks to Mrs. Wilson, we were always made to feel that we were the guilty ones when things like this happened. Why should this time any different? I was a sinner and I was going to HELL where I would BURN FOREVER. After this I really tried to become invisible. I kept everything inside.

A month or so later we were in church and the preacher was speaking on the virtues of staying pure. This was when I totally broke down. I ran from the service, crying all the way to the bathroom. A lot of the women followed me. When they asked me what was wrong I told them about the ride home and what the so called "minister" had done to me. We were always told that if we ever told anyone about the way we were treated no one would believe us. They were right, no one believed me. Why was I feeling guilty for something he had done? Why did I feel so soiled? I'll tell you why. Because Mrs. Wilson. and the Church of Christ said so! They damaged me and many others with their distorted views of right and wrong. They tried to fill our heads with so much crap that I am amazed that any of us made it to today! These people were supposed to be our protectors. To them I say, if any of you are still alive, in my eyes, you failed miserably. (Editor's note: I was sitting beside Sonja when she saw the minister, James Caldwell, come into church that night and she ran out crying. He ordinarily didn't attend our church but I think he came that night to see what kind of reaction he would get when Sonja saw him, not long after the incident when he tried to rape her on a country road. Sarah Hudson Pierce)

Not long after the church incident I decided that I had had enough of Mrs. Wilson. I came up with an idea to make Mrs. Wilson sick. I went to the closet where the weed poison was kept and took a small amount. I put it in the buttermilk. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were the only ones that drank buttermilk so they would be the only ones to get sick. When Mr. Wilson tasted it he said it smelled funny and he thought it might be going bad. Mrs. W. said nonsense and took a big long drink almost finishing hers. When she took the glass away from her lips I was happy for the first time. I knew she would be sick and the way I saw it, she deserved it. Within moments she was very sick and had to be taken to the hospital where she had to have her stomach pumped.

The next day the police came and when they asked me I gladly told them the truth. I was the one that put the poison in the milk. I just wanted to make Mrs. Wilson sick. I didn't want to kill her. But they wouldn't believe me. They thought that I was the evil one. Oh Brother! It was obvious that they didn't know evil. Evil was in the hospital getting better so she could come home and do more evil.

Well, now it must be true. For sure I must be Looney Toons! So I was taken to a mental hospital where I would spend the next nine months. I was so happy to be away from Mrs. Wilson! For the first time in seven years it seemed like someone cared. Of course Mrs. Wilson enjoyed telling my sister Gwen all kinds of lies about where they had taken me. Poor Gwen was told that I had tried to murder Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. They told her that I was receiving shock treatments and that I would be scarred for life.

It wasn't a true insane asylum because they didn't have psychiatrists. They only had therapists that would only see us one hour a day. The rest of the time was ours. We could go to the art room where they had anything we needed or wanted. Being good at art, I was in heaven. I never wanted to leave this wonderful place.

When I wasn't in the art room I was playing football with the guys and having the best time of my life. Actually the only thing I didn't like about the hospital was my therapist. He was a dork. He had no idea what it was like to be a fourteen year old girl. When I figured out that he would be no help to me I just clammed up. Whenever I had to go see him I would put pencil erasers in my ears. This made it where I wouldn't hear him. Then I would focus my eyes on a dot on the floor. I knew the session was over when he stood up. In the nine months, I never talked to him. Why should I? No one had ever believed me before and I didn't trust him because he was working for them.

The last week I was there they gave me an EKG or an EEG. I don�t know the difference between the two and I can't be sure which one it was. Here's what they did. They put some sticky clay like stuff in my hair and hooked wires to it. Then they went to the end of the bed to watch the graphs coming out on a machine. At one point when I was getting bored because I couldn't move at all, I started moving my eyes while they were closed. They knew right away and told me to stop. They said this test would tell them if there was anything wrong in my brain that might make me do bad things. That test proved nothing. So they gave me Sodium Amatol or Sodium Pentothal. Again I don't know the difference and I can't be sure. All I know that it was truth serum and it really works.

I was awake the whole time. There were about four people in the room including my therapist. Then they put the IV into my arm and after just a few minutes they started the questions. Any question they asked I answered without any guilt or shame. It really was quite liberating. I told them about the car ride and everything that the "minister", James Caldwell, had done to me. They said later that they believed me because I got really animated and that rarely happens. Even though they believed me nothing ever was done and again the solution was to send me away. Out of sight out of mind. This time they sent me home to my mom.

The day after that session my mother and stepfather picked me up at the hospital and drove me back to the Turley Home. When I got there my things were already packed. Mrs. Wilson was there. I could tell that she didn't want to talk to me but this time I wasn't afraid of her! I went right up to her, looked her in the eyes and asked her if she had returned the pearl necklace that my Grandminnie had given me. She turned white as a sheet but her answer was, Of course dear and I packed the quilt that your sponsors made for you too. I knew she was lying and I was right.

Before I went to the hospital she had taken my necklace and had given it to her daughter. She said that I wasn't mature enough to own such a nice piece of jewelry. Neither my necklace nor my quilt was ever packed. No surprise to me, but I didn't care because at last I was going home! The only sad thing was that I didn't get to tell any of the girls good-bye because they were all in school. After seven years I was finally going home. I never looked back, until today.

With the exception of most of my siblings, I never had contact with anyone from the home until Sarah found me. Because of her hard work, many people who did their time in Turley are in effect being reunited. To all of you I send a big Aloha from Maui!

If anything good came from my experience at the home, it was the structure in my life. With everything so orchestrated, I felt a certain kind of security, a security I might not have had, had we never been taken from our home. I also learned to live my life governed by one simple attitude, "Nothing lasts forever."

That's it. Of course, this was the Reader's Digest version of events, but I feel good that I could organize the values and traumas from those seven years well enough to tell my story to anyone concerned.

Finally a VERY BIG MAHALO, (Thank You), To Sarah Hudson-Pierce!

Aloha,

Sonja (Bilbrey) Alamia


Bob and Sonja Alamia