The images of the West Side apartment where police found 19 neglected children were so bleak that they fueled outrage even in the White House.
But the stories that unfolded Thursday about those children, their families and the circumstances that brought them to 219 N. Keystone Ave., revealed a far more complex picture than the one first seen on Wednesday.
Maxine Melton, mother of five of the children, worked hard to keep her family together, friends and relatives said. At 26, she was something of a matriarch who opened her home as a place of last resort for her sisters and their children.
In that home, the children apparently were not subjected to the kind of physical trauma that is all too common in a city that sees a child abused to death, on average, every other week.
The children were hungry when police found them late Tuesday, but they were not malnourished, according to initial medical examinations. They were attending school regularly.
And as filthy as the home was when police arrived, the children were in relatively good health.
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Still, while the case was not as horrible as some that have unfolded in Chicago, it was deplorable enough to create a furor that continued to build Thursday.
– The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services took formal custody of 21 children. A 4-year-old boy with cerebral palsy remained at Children’s Memorial Hospital; 15 children who were brought to the DCFS emergency shelter were placed in foster homes; another child was placed with a relative; and three more stayed at the shelter.
And a baby born Wednesday to 31-year-old Diana Melton remained at Bethany Hospital. That child was born with drugs in its system, authorities said.
– DCFS began the process of firing a caseworker who was turned away from the Keystone Avenue home on three occasions but failed to follow up with police. The child-welfare agency, meanwhile, came under more criticism from Mayor Richard Daley. Gov. Jim Edgar targeted the caseworker in particular and said any failings by the agency are part of a larger problem.
– Misdemeanor charges of child neglect were upgraded to a felony charge of child cruelty against Denise Turner, 20, the mother of the boy with cerebral palsy. Maxine Melton, meanwhile, was ordered held in Cook County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bond on her misdemeanor charge, partly because she violated probation for a drug offense. Denise Melton, 24, the mother of three, was also charged with misdemeanor child neglect, bringing to seven the total number of adults arrested. Five of them have been released on personal recognizance bonds and face hearings Feb. 25.
– President Clinton, at a prayer breakfast with Mother Teresa, referred to the story as an example of the social ills threatening America. “Today, this headline in our papers,” Clinton said. ” `Nineteen children found amid squalor in Chicago apartment.’ Not in Calcutta, but in Chicago. Nineteen children living amid human waste and cockroaches, fighting a dog for food.”
Vice President Al Gore, visiting Flower Vocational High School, 3545 W. Fulton Blvd., said: “This incident should serve as a warning bell in this country, especially since some of the officials who have discovered it said they’ve seen other situations. I could show you people in plenty of other cities around this country, who can tell you what is happening to all too many families. Drugs are involved, crime is involved with the breakdown of neighborhoods and families.”
– Chicago officials said the building was never inspected because the city received no complaints and the two-flat does not meet the standards required for annual inspections. City health inspectors, however, are expected to visit the building Friday.
How the Melton family got in the plight that landed seven of them in jail is a story not unusual in the drug-infested, gang-plagued neighborhood they grew up in, friends and relatives said.
Several of their parents have histories of drug abuse and troubles with the law. But friends and relatives say that they have struggled to keep the families together, to feed and clothe the children even as circumstances and their own personal failings conspired to put the young ones at risk.
Officials at Tilton School, 223 N. Keeler Ave., where at least five and as many as eight children from the home attend classes, said three of the pupils were expelled Monday because they were not immunized as required by state law. The principal there said that for officials to persuade the expelled children’s guardians to come to school to pick them up, officials had to threaten them with calling police or DCFS.
Johnny Melton, 28, an uncle to nearly all of the children, returned to the apartment but declined for the most part to talk with reporters. He did say that the family was unfairly portrayed, that things were not as bad as they seemed. While he sat in the two-bedroom apartment Thursday afternoon, all four burners on the gas range that was said to be long inoperative were firing on high.
At least three of the six mothers, including 20-year-old Denise Turner, battled drug addictions. One of the women had been arrested for prostitution. One of the two men living in the apartment had served time in the state penitentiary on a gun conviction. Most of the mothers were on Public Aid.
Life was a series of constant challenges, small and large. When Cassandra Melton could no longer come up with rent money for her own place last year, she turned to her sister Maxine, who gave her and her children shelter rather than having them put out on the streets. When two other sisters were left homeless by a fire late last year, Maxine again took them in.
The Keystone Avenue apartment became so crowded only recently, friends and relatives said. And the difficult became unmanageable.
Getting food, for instance, was a major chore because none of the women had a car. They would have to catch a bus or wait for relatives to transport them. And then food quickly ran out because there were so many people in the house.
“You just can’t come in and see a cabinet full of food every day,” said Shermond Johnson, a cousin and neighbor of the Meltons.
The drug-dealing and danger in the neighborhood added even more pressure, relatives said.
Even in the bitter cold and snow, young men hang out in alleys, doorways, abandoned buildings and street corners distributing drugs. There is frequent gunfire.
“Drug dealers would sit on the porch,” Johnson said. “Maxine has to run them from in front of the house every day.”
Denise Turner, a 20-year-old mother of three, battled her own addiction, according to her mother, Linda Turner.
“I said Denise, you can’t deny it, and three weeks ago, she said she was doing blow (using cocaine),” Turner said. “I said I would take her to rehab. She said she didn’t need rehab.”
Denise Turner became pregnant at age 15 and had three kids in four years. Despite the myriad hurdles that accompany such choices, she tried hard to take good care of the children.
“She just (moved) out this last time and it seems she got caught up, and didn’t know who she wanted to be or what she wanted to do,” said Lavonne Hughes, whose son fathered Turner’s children. “It seems she just got caught up with peer pressure.”
Whatever the pressures and the circumstances, the fact is that the children were living in conditions that could at the very best be described as unsanitary. The family dog, who was back in the apartment with Johnny Melton on Thursday, was eating from the same bowls the children used. Dog feces was found on the floor. The children had few clean clothes. And cockroaches were common-a condition the landlord’s son tried to rectify Thursday with exterminating equipment.
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The fact also is that four of the adults living in the home had criminal records, ranging from felony convictions for delivery of controlled substances to weapons charges.
Those truths fed the outrage that erupted across the city. Daley and Gore took the parents to task for a home in which children only survive, rather than thrive. But the politicians weren’t the only ones.
Darrell Fulton, 14, a freshman at Flower Vocational High, where Daley and Gore visited, said she was upset not only for the children but because the incident fed negative stereotypes, putting more pressure on other African-American kids struggling to succeed.
“I want to show people, and my parents, that to be a young lady and be black, that you can do anything you can put your mind to, no matter what those women did,” Fulton said. “My father works hard. My mom stays at home with us. She’s supporting me, as a teenager, to show me you don’t have to be young and get pregnant, do dope and drink alcohol to be popular. You can be yourself and do what you have to do to get out of school and get a job.”
“I don’t care what people say. I’m getting out,” she said. “All my sisters and brothers are going to do well. It starts at home. With your parents.”