Home

Help for parents

Legislative Update

News

Understanding the issue

Personal stories

Media coverage

Criticism from experts

Juvenile sex law

Get involved

Discussion board

Reading list

Organizations and links

Research on youth sexuality


Ethical Treatment for All Youth

www.ethicaltreatment.org
Email: etay@ethicaltreatment.org

About the author

GARRETT DALEY, 13
As told by his mother Nance

My husband and I had our lives pretty well figured out.  My husband had his retirement planned out after 30 plus years of dentistry, our home was going to be paid for within five years, we traveled all over the world, we were starting a business that would help children in need through the foster parent program (which we had been part of for several years), and we were feeling very blessed.  We had the opportunity just before leaving the foster care program to keep a sibling group of three together by adopting them.  We decided to do this.

Shortly after the oldest of the sibling group came to live with us we started having problems with our then youngest son, Garrett, and the oldest child of the sibling group, Devon.  Without our knowledge, Devon had molested her younger sister, Dani, for the 18 months of her life and while they had lived together prior to them being removed from their birth mother and step-father by Child Protective Services.  She also had been trained since a very young age to work with her maternal grandmother in the family business of prostitution.

Because she wanted our family to love her and keep her she started going into our son's room at night and touching him.  Garrett is learning disabled but still knew it was wrong.  He tried to get her to stop but never told us the words of why he was so angry with her.  He begged us to not adopt her even on the day we were going to court to finalize the adoption.

A little over a year later we found out why. Our daughter Devon came to us and said Garrett had been touching her.  He never denied this statement.  We contacted everyone we were supposed to and on a Friday night, the night our son was to be awarded his Eagle Scout award, he was arrested and put in jail.  They interviewed him without his medication, without us as his parents being there, and also without an attorney.  The next day, Saturday, the county attorney decided to change his charges to the adult court as he had just days before he turned 14 years old.

On Sunday, our daughter Devon, came to us and told us she had lied.  Garrett had not come to her and had not forced her but instead she had gone to him and knew what to do to get him to like her.  We again went to the authorities but no one would listen.  We were accused of choosing our son over our daughter.  We had not chosen either one of them.  We loved them both.  We just wanted the truth.

To fast forward the next several months, our daughter was sent to live in a Residential Treatment Center for young women who had experienced what Devon had experienced in her short life.  We never missed a therapy session or a time to be with her.  Our son was legally banished from our home and we begged people to allow him to live with them.  We paid them for their kindness.  He lived out of box.  He never got angry or mad, just sad that he was too ashamed to tell us.  

He was sentenced to life-time probation, two years in jail (weekends only), with the balance of the 38 years hanging over his head if he were to mess up. He spent two years (weekdays only) in a residential treatment center for young men who had committed these actions.  The younger sister, Dani, continues in intensive therapy for molestation.  

Our family went broke.  Our family home went into foreclosure twice, our credit was ruined, our car repossessed, our children's college and saving accounts drained, our retirement spent and our businesses in financial trouble.  The treatment centers cost us over $10,000.00 per month.  Our attorney's bills were more than we could keep a head of.  This is the financial outcome of this.  Family-wise, our oldest daughter has left the family as she blames us for ruining her brother and not kicking out our daughter.  She has now divorced her husband and is isolated herself from the family.  Our middle daughter who was at college at the time had a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide.  Our oldest son had to leave college as we could no longer afford it.  Our other children have no college funds to go to school on.  Garrett's siblings do not know him.

Devon is having to live with the outcome of her lie.  No matter what, she blames herself and continues to try and correct this but no one will listen.  Dani continues in therapy and is trying her best.  Garrett has been lied about and threatened with a knife. He has lived in a homeless shelter and in jail for events out of his control. He almost lost his leg from a spider bite while in jail without any medical help, and was kept from attending school by the probation department (the school district said he could come back as he had never been any trouble there). He has been trying to get his G.E.D., but with his learning disability it has been very hard.  He has been employed but jobs have been taken away by the probation department.  He has taken lie detector tests and passed.  He has taken Grey tests and passed.  He has taken the penile test and passed.  

He has been told he has no future.  He is 19 and cannot even call another girl 18 or older. He has never been on a date.  He has been told that if he were to marry--slim chance of that--he could not live with his wife if she would to get pregnant.  He could not see his children or have contact with them until they have reached the age of 18.  There is so much more to his story.  This is a just a glimpse into the life of a young boy with learning disabilities who never left his home or his room, was molested by a younger more experienced girl, and lost his life and his future.

As his mother, I worry for him when he is down and feels there is no place to go. I have held him, cried with him and prayed with him but I am unable to honestly tell him he has a future.  Please help my son and others like him.  Neighborhoods have turned on him.  He sits in a house, alone, with the windows covered and afraid.  All of this because he did not say "NO"!
 
December 21, 2005 Update

Garrett's hearing was yesterday and we now have the results.  What is probably more important than the sentencing was the reaction of the probation department.  Our daughter, Devon, who is one of the victims, has been praying for an opportunity to be heard.  She turned 15 on November 20 of this year.  Our attorney felt now was the time.  She had prepared a letter that none of us had seen as it came from her heart and I felt it should be delivered the same way.

Here is her letter word for word.  As you read this picture this young woman standing before a commissioner and in a courtroom full of people whom are strangers to her, people she knows and loves, and her brother, and reading this as she cried.
 
Your Honor,

This letter is concerning David Garrett Daley P115324, whom is in jail right now and waiting to come home, and see his little sisters, brother, nieces and nephews.  David Garrett Daley is on probation for molesting a number of children (whom are all in our family), and its all because of me.  Let's start the story back about 15 years ago.

When I was very young, I lived with my birth mother and birth father in many different places like; Minnesota, Arizona, the trash can. . . .,and they would sexually abuse me, and when my little sister was born, they did the same to her too. (Marie Danielle Daley) Me thinking that's what big sisters do, I did it to her also.  then at the age of four, my birth mother would take me to a shelter and before the shelter owner would call CPS, she would come and get me.  I really don't know what happened after that but they found my little sister in a shack in the desert, my little brother, Jeremy Paul Daley (just born) in the hospital, and then later on they found me in a trash can.  I went to a different foster home than my sister and brother, and wanted to be with them.  Then later they took me to Dr. David and Nance Daley, where my little sister and brother were at.

I was going to therapy with Adel Mayer for a couple years to help me understand what my birth parents taught me was wrong, and she and I thought that I was ready to stop therapy.  I did too.  Then a couple years later I was adopted and Garrett didn't like that, because I was everything he wasn't.  So I thought that if I did something like my birth mother and birth father did to me he might like me.  I got him to do it, well he had a choice, but we got so stuck in it that we did it to my little sister Dani. (Marie Danielle) We tried to stop but we couldn't.  We also tried to tell our parents but we were so scared especially I was, because I thought that I would have to go back to foster care, and I didn't want to do that.  Then right before fifth grade, (2000) my family and I had a talk, things led after another and I lied to my parents and told them that Garrett had sexually abused Dani and I.

Mom was very angry (nice way to say it) at my brother, and that night and she called the cops. My parents locked him in my mom's closet (that is the biggest walk in closet I have ever seen) and told us we were going to go to the police station later that week, and we had to tell the truth, and to this I still regret lying to the police officers.

About a year ago, I went to the police station and talked to a police officer and told him that I had lied.  He couldn't do any thing because I said that my mother told me stuff about when I was little people thought she was a liar, but you want to know something, she is the most honest, loving, and determined mother I have ever seen, and that's why I love her to pieces.  She loves our whole family even when they have made bad choices in life.  She has taught my older sisters and brothers, younger sister and brother and I, to forgive.  Everyone in my family has forgiven Garrett and I, but the government hasn't.  He was only a child with curiosity I was the one with the problem.  he was the one who was mentally younger and I older, and you know what, I still am presently the older one of us two. He shouldn't be the one there, I should.

My little sister Kayda always prays for Garrett to be safe and that he will be happy, and that's pretty big for a seven year old to ask.  My little brother is the only boy in the house, other than my Dad that works to supply the family all the time, doesn't have a brother to throw a football, play catch or go camping with,; he's got to go to a hotel to go camping.  My other little sister Di, who is mentally retarded, counts down the days till Garrett's court dates.  My little sister, Dani, wants Garrett home more than she wants me to be home.  I cry at night because of my wrong doing and how I got him into this mess.  I hope you feel my pain and my family's pain and heart ache to see these people doing this to him.  He is like the Christ of our family he suffers my wrong doing as well as others.  Please help us.  thank, your Honor.

Sincerely
Devon Leah Daley

As Devon, the "victim", read her letter to Commissioner Smith, the surveillance officer sat in the back of the courtroom and with arms fully extended, acted like he was directing an orchestra.  He mocked her, made fun of her, and did not care who saw him.  When she was done she sat down right in front of him, and still crying, he started laughing at her and saying it was a great performance and a joke.  Our daughter's brother and sisters were in the viewing room right behind him and could not understand why he was doing this.  My 81 year old mother was sitting in the row in front of him and was crushed by his actions.

This morning during scripture reading, one of our younger children asked the question of why he was doing that.  Devon started crying.  She had prayed for so long to be able to speak, and to be treated this way was a crime.  This is the person who is going to have the say in our son's life.  Are these the type of people the probation department is made up of?  The parting remarks of the probation team to my sister, mother, daughter, and uncle and aunt was "he better enjoy himself for the next few weeks because when I get him, his ass is mine.  He will not be out this time for long, and the next time, he will go to prison and no sob story will get in the way this time".  What kind of people are these?  Tiffany Grissom and Surveillance Officer James.  I have sixty five days to get someone to hear my words.  Actually to hear their words.
 
Garrett was sentenced to 65 days in the county jail and will be released on Feb. 19.  This is a whole lot better than the 10 years the probation department wanted and 5 years the county attorney wanted.  The only problem is, I'm just learning this so I hope I say it correctly: upon his release he has no more jail time.  So, if Tiffany and James can do what they are saying they are going to do, the court has no option but to put Garrett in prison for the 5 to 10 years at his next violation hearing.  

So, we were happy last night because he is not going to serve prison time but scared to death that unless someone does something, he will be in prison before the summer comes.  Garrett asked the judge and then begged the judge to allow either his father or myself to be able to come with him to the probation department for his weekly visits.  The county attorney just about blew his top and said Garrett was adult and we (his parents) were his whole problem.  Garrett is learning disabled and he gets scared, nervous, and confused.  He is 19 but not typical.  Garrett knows his life is on the line and wants support.  The probation department does not want us around as we can help him and that destroys their plan.
 
What can be done?  Who can stand up and stop this terrible waste of government money, time of the probation department, and the loss of this young man's life?
 
Nance Daley
Gilbert, Arizona
nandaley@msn.com
Submitted January 5, 2006