THE CHILD CATCHER

A Harvard-educated lawyer reflects on a childhood spent in foster care in this nonfiction account of a landmark civil rights case.

Bridge follows up his first memoir (2008’s Hope’s Boy) about his life with his mentally ill mother and his stint (lasting more than a decade) in Los Angeles County foster care with this wrenching yet ultimately triumphant look at the case that launched him into “a lifetime of defending children’s rights.” The Eufaula Adolescent Center, Alabama’s largest mental institution for children, held 120 patients, nearly all from homes with “hardened backgrounds.” Eufaula, Bridges writes, had a “well-known history of violence, including abuse by staff and other children. It also had a history of covering up that violence.” With little experience in the courtroom (aside from a dispute involving his 24-year-old mother that resulted in the then 7-year-old Bridges being placed in foster care for more than 11 years), he joined a Washington, D.C., public-interest firm that was acting as lead counsel in a federal class action against Eufaula and every other Alabama psychiatric institution. This landmark case took more than 23 years to litigate, but it guaranteed patients with developmental disabilities who were involuntarily committed to state institutions the constitutional right to treatment that would afford them a realistic opportunity to return to society. Bridge’s well-researched and annotated account includes harrowing stories from inside Eufaula; particularly wrenching is the case of a young boy named David Dolihite, who for every hour of therapy spent more than 33 hours in some form of isolation; a suicide attempt left him with permanent brain damage. Throughout the narrative, the author powerfully weaves in his years of experience in the system as a resident at MacLaren Hall, a “walled and caged compound [that] could pack in three hundred boys and girls from newborns to eighteen-year-olds.” The inclusion of this personal history vividly underscores his motivation to leave a higher-paying job to find justice for these children.

A fierce, maddening chronicle of advocacy on behalf of our most vulnerable citizens.