Drug Addiction Stories & Info

When she moved in next door, I have to admit I was ecstatic.  She was a beautiful young teenager and the perfect age to be a babysitter for my young daughters who were in kindergarten and first grade.  As I took a pitcher of lemonade and some homemade cookies over to introduce myself the girls insisted on going with me.  April, the teenager smiled as she saw them coming over.  Her face lit up and as she confided in me after we got to know each other, she told me she had always wished for a sibling.

April soon became part of our family.  I learned that she lived with her mother and stepfather and that her mom had been unable to have more children following her birth.  I also picked up on her dislike for her stepfather but I did not know why.  April started babysitting for me on a regular basis and bonded with my two young girls.  She would even sleep over and as a single mom who worked two jobs I appreciated that.

One time, April’s stepfather said the girls could stay over but when I saw the look on April’s face I said it would be easier if they could just sleep in their own beds.  Over time, I began noticing changes in April.  She was eating like crazy, and things started to go missing around the house.  I told her she was too pretty to start eating like that but she said she actually hoped she could get fat so “he” would leave her the hell alone.  When I asked who he was, she would not answer.

One night I caught April in my purse. I had begun to suspect she was on something and she confessed it was heroin.  I walked her home and talked to her mother.  Her stepfather was at work at a local manufacturing plant.

A couple of days later, I heard screaming and went in the backyard in time to see April hitting her stepfather with a shovel.  My two daughters were in their yard.  April was screaming “Stay away from them, you asshole!  You are not going to touch them or I swear I will kill you, you son of a bitch!”

Someone heard the commotion and called the police.  When they got there, they arrested April for assault.  She kept begging me to keep the girls away from her stepfather.  It came out after she saw him with his arm around one of my daughters that she had been abused by him for several years.  The heroin was her way of dealing with it and getting through it.  However, she did love my daughters and could not stand the thought that he might hurt them too.

The charges against April were dropped and she was sent to a treatment program.  Her stepfather was charged with several counts relating to the sexual and physical abuse of April.  She moved in with some relatives in another town but she calls and lets me know how she is doing and the girls love talking to her on the phone.  I cringe when I think of that dirtbag stepfather of hers touching one of my little girls but I am thankful that in the end, April’s love for my girls stopped her nightmare of abuse and she got clean.