Billie Walter

In 1957 my father felt it necessary to try to obtain custody of me and my little brother Bobby.  Back then, a father getting custody was almost unheard of, but he went to court and won when my mother failed to appear in court to fight for us.  Because my dad was still single at that time, he was forced to put us in foster care.  My father made every attempt possible to keep my mother from finding out where we were living.  Every time she found out where we were living he would move us to a new location.

The first place that I remember staying was with a woman named Mrs. McKenna who housed a lot of kids.  I think she took in as many kids as she could, just to collect money from the state.  We only stayed there for a couple of weeks then my dad moved us in with our second foster family, the Frank’s.   We only stayed with the Frank’s for a couple of months.

We were then moved into our third foster home where we would live for three years.  It was a farm located in Ohio with Mr. and Mrs. Suttles.  We lived in this foster home for three years.  Looking back on my childhood I would have to say that this was probably the worst three years that I endured while growing up.  First of all the farm house was an old shack with no running water.  We had to pump the water from the well and bring it into the house for cooking and put it on the stove to heat it up for bathing.  There was a small path on the side of the house that led down to the outhouse.   Of course, it had the traditional Sears and Roebuck catalog which was used in the place of toilet paper.  This farm was located about a mile from the bus stop where we would get the bus for school.  We would walk that old dirt road every day.  The Suttles’ were probably well into their fifties or sixties.  They had taken in Larry, another child prior to taking us in who was a little older and retarded.  I’m sure between the three of us we were quite a handful for them.

Since we were living on a farm they expected us to help with the chores.  My job was to remove the chickens from their nests and collect the eggs.  If you didn’t grab the chickens quickly, they would peck you.  Sometimes I just let the eggs accumulate and got them when the chickens weren’t there.  This wasn’t a good plan and when they found out what I had been doing I took a real beating.  No, I’m not talking about a smack on the bottom, I’m talking about going out to a tree, pulling off a twig and skinning it and then whipping me until I had welts all up and down my back and bottom and legs.  If the switch was not available then a belt would suffice.   This was not a rare occurrence.  Beatings would happen quite frequently.  If we didn’t eat all of the food that they had put on our plate, we would be beaten.  I had been beaten so much during that three year period that when anyone got near me, even to give me a hug, I would throw my hands up in front of my face and back away from them.

While Mrs. Suttles was trying her best to provide a somewhat normal childhood with school and various activities like piano lessons and tap dancing, Mr. Suttles had begun to sexually molest me.  Along with the molestation came threats of beatings and death if I ever told anyone.  I never told anyone until I was in my twenties when I decided to try and deal with some of the pains of my past.  Finally at ten years old my dad came once again to take Bobby and I away.  I was so thrilled to be leaving and to finally be going to live with my dad.  Or so I thought.