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Memoir Explores Foster Life

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By MITCH STACY, The Associated Press

Published: February 4, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - At the tender age of 22, Ashley Rhodes-Courter is living a pretty fantastic life. She's attractive, well-spoken and college-educated, with doting parents and a newly published memoir that's generating national buzz.

How she got there, however, is the real story, vividly chronicled in a book that recounts her journey from neglected, abused orphan stuck in Florida's overburdened foster care system, to articulate, respected activist who has commanded the attention of judges, members of Congress and even the president of the United States.

For Rhodes-Courter, writing the book -- called "Three Little Words" -- was an intense journey into the dark corners of her childhood, the events of which were pieced together from her wispy memories and about 80,000 pages of documents generated by the court and state child welfare workers as they shuffled her through 14 different foster homes in nine years.

At best, the places were crowded, the foster parents harried. In one, she and other kids were beaten, yanked by the hair and deprived of food. She later sued the state of Florida and the abusive foster parents, winning an out-of-court settlement that helped pay for college.

Part of her research involved revisiting some of the places and interviewing former foster parents. Most of them had been a blur to her at the time. That process, she said, helped "give me my past back." There were heroes, too, like the court-appointed volunteer guardian who became her tenacious advocate.

"Everything was very convoluted," said Gay Courter, who with her husband, Phil, adopted the child at age 12. "And it was overlaid with anger, because every time she left a place she was never told why. And like a kid does, she always figured it was her fault."

'I Guess So'

The documents demonstrated that few adults in the system really connected with the child as she was moved from place to place. One form even listed her as a boy. She resented that the workers routinely described her as "this crazy wild child that nobody wanted."

In reality, she was a precocious, attention-starved kid who excelled in school even during the worst of times. The only constant in her life was a yearning for her biological mother, from whom she was taken at age 3. Her mother's addictions and lifestyle eventually led to parental rights being severed.

"What I could not avoid was an irrational throbbing for my mother that came in waves," Rhodes-Courter writes in the book.

"As long as I kept busy, I managed to skip over most of my feelings by reminding myself that this was just another bad habit, like biting my nails. But during quiet moments I could be overwhelmed by thoughts about where she was and why she had never come for me."

Rhodes-Courter hit the foster-kid jackpot at age 12 when the well-to-do Courters plucked her out of a Tampa orphanage and moved her into their big waterfront home. Her new dad was a filmmaker and her mom was a best-selling novelist who volunteered as an advocate for foster children in court.

The young woman writes honestly of her benign feelings for the upbeat and nurturing Courters when she first got there and how she viewed it as little more than a business arrangement.

The "three little words" of the book's title were those uttered by the emotionally indifferent child when a judge asked if she wanted the adoption to become permanent: "I guess so."

"Did I really want to stay with the Courters? Some days I felt as if I had been born into their family; other times I felt like a guest who had stayed too long," she writes. "Yet I was more afraid of an unknown place. This could be the best deal anyone could ever offer me."

Hard Road To Acceptance

She did her best to be difficult. Her adoptive parents did their best to be patient. Time and familiarity eventually led to acceptance and affection. As she matured, she vowed to work for kids who still were languishing in a foster care network that had improved only slightly since she left it.

At 14, she wrote a winning essay on how the "Harry Potter" books changed her life and got to meet author J.K. Rowling. Later she wrote an essay about her life that won a New York Times Magazine national high school writing contest. Soon she was being asked to give speeches to judges, lawmakers and child advocates.

She also was invited to the White House to meet President Clinton.

Now freshly graduated from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg with degrees in theater and communications, Rhodes-Courter travels the country lecturing about her experiences and promoting adoption. When at home in St. Petersburg, she does some public-relations work and mentors foster kids. The movie rights to her story have already been optioned to a producer.

There are lingering issues, but mostly she's come to terms with her rotten childhood.

"I definitely don't have any anger or hostility in me, but I certainly still have justice at the forefront of my thoughts and actions," she said.

"Because I don't feel children should be subjected to abuse and poor foster families. All children deserve to have a chance at permanency and a happy life. ... I want people to read it and be inspired to make changes in their own community."

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