Grads Leave but Aren’t Forgotten : Study Tracks How Incest Victims Fare Outside Center

Slim, pretty, 17-year-old Anne lay on a bed in her new home and chatted about her nomination for Girl of the Month at school, her boyfriend and sewing, her favorite hobby.

“I’m making chocolate-covered strawberries for (my boyfriend) tonight,” she said, smiling as she tried to wheedle her new guardian, Kay Sovia, into driving her to the supermarket.

Not long ago, family scenes were very different for Anne (not her real name). When she lived with her real mother, Anne’s stepfather molested her repeatedly.

Anne reported the abuse, first to her mother and then to authorities. But her stepfather denied it, and Anne’s mother supported him, so police could not arrest him. Like many child abuse victims whose parents cannot be prosecuted because of lack of evidence, Anne was taken from her home by the court after counselors determined that she had been molested. She wound up at the Olive Crest incest treatment center’s Garden Grove group home with five other girls whom she now regards as her sisters.

Her new “parents” are Kay and Ray Sovia, who have run the group home for about 18 months and who regard the girls as daughters. Pictures of Olive Crest graduates and current residents--most of whom come from Orange County homes--line the walls and overflow on the dresser of their cramped bedroom/office.

Their large, well-kept, four-bedroom, two-story home is on a quiet, middle-class residential street. The Sovias, who each raised large families of their own before they were married seven years ago in Michigan, live in the house full time. (A substitute house parent supervises the girls every other weekend, when the Sovias travel in their motor home.)

As in most programs of this kind, Olive Crest’s responsibility for its charges ends when they turn 18. But Donald Verleur, founder of the 130-bed, 11-home program paid for by government grants and private donations, recently decided Olive Crest should look beyond the group homes to make sure the trauma of incest doesn’t come back to haunt Anne and other Olive Crest graduates after they leave.

With the help of Cal State Fullerton professors Marlene De Rios and Gangadharappa Nanjundappa, Verleur started a follow-up study of Olive Crest graduates last fall. The study is the first of its kind in the county, according to Verleur.

The study is being conducted through a questionnaire, which is sent to each graduate six months after she leaves the program to find out how she has adjusted. All girls must leave Olive Crest when they turn 18, and in most cases they cannot return to their families, so many graduates are living independently when they respond to the questionnaire.

“The main purpose of the study is to see how well graduates have adjusted to working and taking care of themselves,” said Nanjundappa. The sociology professor will sift through the data and draw conclusions about Olive Crest’s effectiveness in preparing its graduates for everyday life.

Nanjundappa hopes to have a sampling of more than 100 Olive Crest graduates within a year so he can begin his evaluation. Olive Crest now has 30 to 40 completed questionnaires, but Nanjundappa says the study’s progress has been hampered by a lack of money.

Research Money Sought

De Rios, an anthropology professor, said the group has applied to the United Way for research money but probably won’t receive the grant for four or five months if the application is approved. If money becomes available, Olive Crest will continue the study indefinitely, Verleur said.

Until then, the professors are relying on the Olive Crest Auxiliary volunteers they have trained to administer the questionnaire.

“We’re really putting ourselves on the line with this,” De Rios said, explaining that the study could uncover some negative effects of Olive Crest’s treatment program.

Among the questions in the survey are: Have you contacted your parents or house parents since leaving? How would you rate your job satisfaction? Have you been incarcerated since leaving Olive Crest? Have you used alcohol, marijuana, PCP, cocaine or other drugs? Have you obtained further education and, if so, what kind?

All information gained from the study is confidential; respondents do not put their names on the questionnaire, Verleur said.

In addition to measuring the effectiveness of the Olive Crest program, the study also will include questions to help determine whether there’s a relationship between the child’s family background and her subsequent abuse or molestation, Nanjundappa said. He hopes the study will help target types of households in which abuse is likely to occur. Child abuse prevention organizations can then use this information to identify and help high-risk families.

Already-Established Link

De Rios pointed to an already-established link between drug and alcohol abusers and child molesters. The researchers hope to find additional links through the study so that incestuous and other abusive relationships can be prevented.

“We’re very interested in the results of this--we want to see how we’re doing,” said Kay Sovia.

But the Sovias don’t have to wait for the study results to see how the four graduates they helped through Olive Crest are adjusting to life away from the group home. They keep in touch with the three girls who are in Orange County, and Beth Watters, a 1984 graduate who lives in Pennsylvania with her grandmother, writes frequently.

Watters, now 19, was a rebellious teen-ager when she entered Olive Crest’s program in May, 1984.

“I was out of control and running around wild all the time,” Watters said in a telephone interview.

She said she received little attention from her mother and had a father and two stepfathers who never disciplined her. “I hadn’t had any parents to help me grow up.”

After her mother died when she was 16, Watters went to live with her grandmother, who was unable to care for her because she was grieving her husband’s death three months earlier.

Settled Into Deep Depression

Watters was sent to Olive Crest’s Garden Grove home, and settled into a deep depression that lasted for months but ended shortly after the Sovias arrived as the new house parents.

“When we first got here, the house parents before us told us, ‘You’ll have a terrible time with her,’ ” Kay Sovia said. For six months before the Sovias arrived, Watters had spent most of her time alone in her bedroom. But the Sovias required her to spend more time with the other girls.

“She never talked about it (her mother’s death) or cried. One day, I just started talking to her about how I still cry when I think of my mother dying, and she just started crying,” Kay Sovia said. “After that, it was all right.”

Under the Sovias’ supervision, Watters began her steady climb “up the hill” to maturity, as she put it. Previously a C student, she started making an effort in school, graduated with straight A’s and was named class valedictorian.

She moved to Pennsylvania to live with her grandmother and has since bought a new car and obtained a secretarial job. Her goal is to attend college and study computer science or word processing. Watters said Olive Crest “is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Shared Attitude

The girls now living in the Garden Grove home under the Sovias’ supervision seem to share that attitude. They appear well-adjusted--one is a head cheerleader, one was elected to her school’s student council, one is an honor student and nearly all have boyfriends.

On their photo-lined bedroom walls, the Sovias have ample evidence of how far the girls have come since arriving at the home. The most dramatic example of change is Natalie (not her real name), a 17-year-old who came to the group home last year from a live-in drug rehabilitation center. Her first school picture while at the Garden Grove home shows an angry-looking teen-ager wearing heavy black eyeliner and a punk hairdo.

“I was already mellowing out then,” Natalie said when she recently looked at the picture, “but I was still pretty into heavy metal.”

A former average or below-average student, Natalie received three A’s and two Bs on her last report card. After high school, she wants to become a hairdresser.

Natalie also has conquered her drug problem, Ray Sovia said. The Sovias test the girls regularly for traces of drugs or alcohol. The girls don’t resist this required procedure; on the contrary, Sovia said, it deters them from abusing substances. “It’s a good excuse for them--they can say no to their friends because they can say they’re going to be tested,” he said.

In addition to regular drug testing, each girl in the program is given instruction in the use of and access to contraceptives. . However, Sovia added, if the girl has a guardian outside the home who objects, she will not be given contraceptives.

“There isn’t much we can do about (the girls’ sexual activity),” he said, so the Sovias concentrate on helping the girls prevent pregnancy.

When a girl arrives at the Olive Crest home, she is placed on a four-part “emancipation program” designed to teach her how to live on her own, find a job and function independently. Completion of each part of the program gives the girl more privileges--including opportunities to go out on dates--and an increased allowance. The girls also are rewarded with home appliances they can take with them when they leave.

The most vulnerable time for an Olive Crest client is when she first enters the group home, Kay Sovia said. If a girl has just been placed, she is more likely to run away from the home than a girl who’s been there awhile, she explained.

The Sovias encourage their girls to find part-time jobs, especially in the summer. Half of each paycheck is automatically deposited in the girl’s personal savings account so she will have money to start out with when she turns 18. The girl keeps the rest to spend as she likes.

In the Sovias’ group home, life runs much as it does in any home with a large family. The girls rotate household chores, and each cooks dinner once a week.

Each girl is in therapy with a psychologist and a psychiatrist, with the frequency of these private sessions determined by individual need.

The incest victims also participate in group therapy, and all girls attend “family therapy” sessions led by the Sovias to help the girls work out problems affecting the entire household.

Donald Verleur said he feels that although the psychological treatment is valuable, the best therapy is the family-oriented environment the house parents provide, along with the encouragement to become active in school, hobbies and work.

Social worker Jeanne O’Bryan, who coordinates the psychiatric and psychological therapy, agreed. “The relationship with the house parents is the key to success with these girls,” she said.

Kay Sovia noted that the trust she and her husband have built with their girls allows them to talk about almost any problem.

The Sovias believe in treating the girls as they would their own daughters. Kay Sovia said there are typical family squabbles, but the girls “don’t take it personally” when she yells because they realize the house parents care.

“A lot of people get the impression these kids are somehow different, but they’re not,” Ray Sovia said. “The important thing is maintaining the mother and father image. We show them we’re disappointed when they do something wrong.”