2 years ago I was on social media and I kept coming across this horrific murder of a 16 year old foster youth in a congregate care facility called Lakeside. There was a video of the incident and final conscious moments of his life, where he throws a sandwich in the cafeteria and winds up getting restrained by multiple staff to the point of passing out and urinating on himself. His body lies still and there is a hesitation to seek further medical help by surrounding staff and nurses.
2 days later he would be pronounced dead. Lakeside, now Vivant, murdered this young man. The director at the time (Kelly Stone) wasn’t held accountable and is being allowed to further her education and career in this industry. The staff and nurse involved were let off with probation. This was honestly the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Cornelius had a family that wanted to care for him. The state would rather pay facilities like these instead of his family to help him get home, ultimately failing him in the worst way possible!
I don’t know why it is so taboo for us to bring up foster care, especially in public conversation, but I can’t stay quiet any more and neither should the American people. I understand it’s uncomfortable and unpleasant to hear at times, but imagine living it, this is our reality and we can’t accept this any longer. We foster youth don’t get much of a chance. As you can see, we are lucky to survive the placements our state governments neglect and abuse us in. Worst of all, it’s all funded by our tax dollars, and the majority of the public don’t even know.
Changing this current narrative is my goal. In commemoration of Cornelius and in honor of foster care awareness month, I would like to gather support from the public, to join me in a Red Sand Project. I hope this inspires people enough to take action, ask questions and support my efforts in holding these institutions accountable!
No one should get away with this type of traffickcing, abuse/exploitation and murder! It’s time to accept that the foster care system is broken and children are dying. Cornelius Fredricks should be here today. There is no excuse or acceptable reason for this to have happened, but it did. I think about him often, despite never meeting, I know him. I was dealt a similar hand in life and can relate to being dehumanized to a number or a file in the system.
I want to continue to do my best to bring more awareness to my demographic’s issues. So I would love for this to be an ongoing project as we build and grow this community together. The diversity of foster youth’s perspectives deserve some spotlight and more than a couple mics. If we can pay more attention and listen to our foster youth, we can prevent tragedies like this from happening.
Kayla is a resilient foster care survivor of institutional abuse. They hope to use their insight of the child welfare system to spread awareness of the civil rights violations happening day in and day out, especially within the Troubled Teen Industry. She has written articles for The Hill https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/543963-privatization-of-foster-care-has-been-a-disaster-for-children, Ms. Magazine https://msmagazine.com/author/kmuzquiz/ and Children's Rights https://www.childrensrights.org/im-a-proud-pit-bull/. They are currently attending Palo Alto College in San Antonio Tx, as they have also been a certified dog trainer since 2016 and found a lot of healing through working with dogs of all breeds! They even have a pit bull service dog of their own.
