‘I do not want to be found dead’ — girl, 16, asking for help

No one plans for their child’s life to be like this. No one would plan this.

Sometimes, despite all efforts to the contrary, a child steps off the anticipated path and into darkness.

Lily’s parents have struggled for years to help her. To help her manage the symptoms of her mental disorders. To help her find the right medications. To help her stay in school.

They’ve tried love, and always will. They’ve tried tough love. They’ve even pressed charges against her in the hope of teaching her the consequences of her actions.

But Lily is choosing her own path. And lately, that has led her to illegal drugs and prostitution.

Lily is 16.

“The way she’s going, she does not have a life ahead of her — a good life — at all,” the girl’s mother says during an interview in her Dartmouth home. “I’m terrified what’s going to happen to her.”

Lily states this rather more bluntly: “I need help. I do not want to be found dead, hanging from a tree.”

The Chronicle Herald is not publishing Lily’s real name or her family members’ names because she is a youth who is involved in a court case. Also, her family fears that by identifying her, she would become more vulnerable to predators.

The first sign that Lily was having trouble came years ago, when her mother received a phone call from her preschool teacher telling her that Lily had a hard time playing with other kids and was acting aggressively, sometimes hitting them.

Soon afterwards, in Grade Primary, came the first diagnosis: severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Others were to follow, including oppositional defiant disorder and anxiety.

Over the years, Lily’s symptoms have been treated with mood stabilizers and narcotics, depressants and antidepressants, stimulants and antipsychotics. But nothing has kept her safe or well.

Her education has been rocky. She left public school and later tried attending two schools for students with special education needs, but she was kicked out of one after her behaviour became too challenging. The behaviour specialist at the other wrote in a letter to one of Lily’s doctors that she defaced and stole property, claimed to communicate with dead people and had angry outbursts, paranoid thoughts and an altered perception of reality. She also harmed herself in the school washroom and twice told the school that she had ingested bleach.

Shoplifting has come easy to her. Hair mousse, makeup, bras, underwear, clothing, shoes and a vibrator are just some of her spoils, her mother says. Her family has resorted to locking valuables in a safe.

She has attacked and threatened several members of the family. She has kicked her grandmother in the stomach, kicked and punched her mother, raised a knife to her mother’s back, fought her father and assaulted her sister. When she was younger, she placed pins in her parents’ pillows so they would get pricked in the face when they lay down.

Lily says sometimes she just needs to “smash things,” and frequently gets into physical fights.

“I’ve beat up quite a few people, including people I should not have, including Mom,” she says.

She threatens — and has tried — to end her life.

Her family has kicked her out of the house on several occasions, although she still sometimes lives there. She has been kicked out of shelters for damaging property. Last summer, she ended up living in strangers’ sheds and backyards in Lower Sackville.

A few months ago, Lily was living at the Phoenix youth shelter in Halifax when two female residents invited her to a party.

She created a YouTube video using cue cards to tell the story of what happened next.

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“We were listening to music, drinking, the usual,” she recounted.

One of her friends suggested dressing up in lingerie and taking photos, and several girls agreed. It was supposed to be “just for fun,” the friend said.

“After everyone had their picture taken, I passed out,” read Lily’s cue cards. “And when I woke up, there were four men in the room. None of my friends were there anymore. They all left. The men saw that I was awake and said, ‘Hey, Beauty! Guess what!? You’re our little bitch now.’”

One of the men pulled a gun out of a hockey bag and told her that if she didn’t agree to sell sex for money, he would shoot her.

“I kept saying, ‘Please, please, don’t make me do this.’ I kept begging and pleading, but they just laughed,” she wrote.

Lily said the men forced her to download an app that would send clients to her through the website Backpage, and told her they would track her movements.

Not long after, she got a text asking, “How much?”

She replied as the men had instructed her: $140 for a half-hour or $200 for an hour.

“I had no choice. The whole thing was framed from the beginning and I never knew.”

For the next four months, Lily met men for paid sex in hotels, houses and apartments, she says. She handed the money over to the men who had threatened her, and once in a while they gave her $50.

“I felt disgusted. I still feel disgusted with myself because of it,” she says. “Because I remember every time, everything that happened.”

One day, her aunt heard her phone ringing constantly and asked what was going on. Lily confided in her, and she went to the police in early February. She says while one officer was helpful and understanding, two others said her story didn’t make sense and asked if she had voluntarily posted the ad on Backpage.

“I left crying my eyes out because they legit tried to force me to say I did it myself. ’Cause they didn’t believe me and my story did not match up to previous events.”

She stopped trying to get help from the police after that.

Const. Pierre Bourdages, spokesman for the Halifax police, said he couldn’t comment on the specific case but said the force encourages anyone with concerns about their treatment by police to come forward. He added that police want to help anyone who is forced into prostitution, and he urged anyone with information about such cases to call police.

After the family contacted police, Lily’s mother asked Backpage to take the ad down, and would-be johns stopped contacting Lily.

The interim co-ordinator at Stepping Stone, a Halifax organization that supports sex workers, says Lily’s story is not unique.

“Her story is not at all surprising to me, at all, whatsoever,” says Alan Brown, who is also a professor of sociology at Mount Saint Vincent University and does research on sex work.

Stepping Stone does not provide services to underage sex workers, but Brown said he has heard stories similar to Lily’s.

People who are minors, living at shelters or exposed to peer pressure and drugs or alcohol in a party setting are vulnerable to coercion to enter the sex trade.

“Any one of those things independently is a significant source of vulnerability. When you combine them all together, it’s a really unfortunate perfect storm for this sort of victimization to occur,” Brown said. “Those kinds of things are often the tools that are used against people who are vulnerable to compel them to work in the trade.”

More recently, Lily was introduced to injected Dilaudid, but she says she has stopped taking it and hopes it is now behind her.

(INGRID BULMER / Staff)

For years, Lily has been in and out of mental health programs and services, including therapy sessions, stays in the IWK Health Centre’s in-patient youth mental health unit and the adolescent day treatment program.

But when she leaves those programs, she always returns to her previous condition.

Her parents want Lily to be admitted — involuntarily, if necessary — to a secure, 24-7 mental health facility and taken off all medications in order to get an accurate assessment of her baseline mental health. Lily says she’s willing to go to a facility if it has Wi-Fi, if she can come and go as she wishes, if there’s not a long wait time to get in, and if there are other kids around.

But Nova Scotia’s 24-7 youth mental health facility, called Adolescent Intensive Services, was cut from seven days a week to five days a couple of years ago.

A spokesman for the IWK says the decision to cut service to five days was not based on finances, but rather on a best-practices model of care. The reduced service also means that more youth can get help, the spokesman said.

The IWK’s Garron Centre, formerly 4 South, is also an in-patient unit, but it is primarily for acute or emergency cases.

Lily’s mother says the IWK has never offered long-term admittance to the Garron Centre, and that a psychiatrist there has told the family that the facility is unable to meet Lily’s needs.

“The system’s failing the kids,” says Lily’s father. “The funding’s got to go to the right place and I don’t think the government is putting it in the right place. I think they’re taking it from the wrong place. It’s just horrible.”

Last fall, Lily’s pediatrician sent a letter to her psychiatrist asking for a referral to an out-of-province facility.

“So far, the treatment she has received from IWK mental health services has not been beneficial over the long run. … I do not think she can get the type of psychiatric help she needs in Nova Scotia and I am wondering if you would consider referral out of province,” the letter reads. “I realize that you have tried your best, but this girl’s life is going downhill fast and she needs help as soon as possible.”

The girl’s mother says the IWK psychiatrist responded that the hospital’s Adolescent Intensive Services program is adequate. But the last time Lily was there, she was kicked out for refusing to comply with the no-scent policy, and ended up getting handcuffed by police after she attacked a staff member.

Lily’s parents turned to their MP, Robert Chisholm, for help.

Chisholm said he contacted Health Minister Leo Glavine’s office to bring the family’s situation to his attention but didn’t get a helpful response.

“If there’s an issue that keeps me up at night, it’s this one: the lack of mental health services and the lack of funding that is directed in health care towards mental health. It’s extraordinary,” Chisholm said. “There’s no question the capacity out there to deal with mental health issues is continually being cut back.”

Lily’s mother signed a consent form that would have allowed Lily’s medical records to be released to the health minister for advice, but she says the response she received was a form letter with “generic mumbo-jumbo.”

A Health Department spokesman said the department responded to the family’s concern in November by informing them of mental health resources and the Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Act. The department also forwarded the family request to the IWK.

The spokesman added that if patients have concerns with a physician’s medical decisions, they can contact the College of Physicians Surgeons of Nova Scotia.

Patients who require out-of-province treatment can receive funding from the province but must first meet eligibility criteria, including receiving approval from the department and a request for external treatment by the patient’s specialist.

Lily’s parents turned to this newspaper in the hope that someone can suggest something to help their daughter.

“The choices that she’s made so far in her life are dangerous,” says her mother. “She puts herself in harm’s way constantly. We’re just so frustrated with the health system and not being able to get her the help that she needs. It’s just agonizing. … I have nowhere to turn.”

Lily knows she needs help. She wants to continue her education but isn’t sure she can handle a regular school environment.

She’s been looking for a job but hasn’t had any luck so far. She dreams of becoming a video game designer or a tattoo artist.

“There are things that I want to do, but I know I will never get there,” she says. “I pretty much just want to get help, figure my life out, not go down the wrong path.”

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