Court Ordered Custody

This novel is a work of fiction based on a true story. Many of the names, characters, events, and locations have been changed or modified to protect the identity of the children depicted in this story and other characters my book is loosely based on. Any names used are already in the public domain. Other than that, any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, outside of the confines of this novel is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design: CS Bennett 

Cover Model - Faith Elizabeth Chase

Copyright \ 2012 

All Rights Reserved 

ISBN: 978-1-62209-807-1

Chapter 1

Hacienda Girls Ranch was a 15-bed residential group home for troubled girls in Melbourne, Florida. It was where I was headed to right now. Located near a balmy and bustling popular Atlantic coast beach, and not far from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in Melbourne, the home was just twenty minutes south of Cocoa Beach, Florida. The area was considered a part of Florida's Space Coast because of NASA. The ranch was a place for girls aged 15 to 18 years who had been abused, neglected and\/or abandoned. This particular facility specialized in caring for girls with emotional or behavioral issues too challenging for placement in traditional foster care homes. The facility provided the girls with mental health counseling, emotional support, 24-hour supervision, remedial education, an independent living program, physical fitness and vocational opportunities. I had visited the center on numerous occasions before to meet with my one charge that happened to be warehoused there, a seventeen year old named Porsha Watson. 

Dependency Court placed her there long after her mother had abandoned her at a young age. As for her father, he had left the scene and long before she inhaled her first breath of life this side of her mother's womb. For a while she was an adopted child but that did not work out well. She ran away from that family setting on numerous occasions. Only after being floated and bounced around from one family member to another over the years, then finally abandoned by those same family members, did a Volusia County judge order her into state custody and into one of several state run foster care group homes.  

A foster care home setting would have been more favorable and more beneficial for her and others like her but few foster care parents wanted to deal with teenagers, especially girls. They preferred youngsters; children they could discipline and control to a great extent. Teenagers came with too much emotional baggage, which sometimes included bad habits, bad language, and sometimes bad attitudes. When you factored in hormones and boys on the prowl, it was not a situation many people wanted to take on. The only places left for them to go were foster care group homes. Fortunately for me, I did not have a lot of problem children in my newly acquired caseload, just children with problems.  

The ride from my Daytona Beach office took nearly forty-five minutes down a wide opened stretch of Interstate 95 to Melbourne. Traffic was light and overhead skies clear. I was appreciative of that. But I wasn't out of the woods yet. The forecast called for a light morning rain. That I could handle. 

Glancing down at my cell phone I saw that it was just a few minutes after 8:00 AM. Still, I could not get over how light traffic was. Usually I-95 was crawling with cars. RV's packed with tourists traveling up to Orlando to visit various theme parks there were usually in abundance. The fact that I left Daytona Beach around 7:30 early that morning possibly explained the sparse traffic flow I had encountered so far. Just midway into my overall journey, I knew that traffic could easily return to rush hour levels at the drop of a dime and worse if an accident occurred. But I remained hopeful that I could make it through the day without any major delays.