Fred Whitman is a balding 55-year-old with kind eyes and a voice that's smooth-jazz calm.
The other morning, seated behind a generic county-issued desk, he was recounting his conversation with a teen. This would not be unusual.
As intake director for Lucas County Juvenile Court, he talks daily with kids. But in this job, it apparently helps to know your rappers.
Repeating his conversational short cut, Mr. Whitman threw his hands up in the air and recited lyrics sung by rapper Lil Wayne on Gorilla Zoe's song "Lost":
I'ma need counseling, I lost my mind!
OK, maybe you had to be there.
But the soft-spoken and possibly even shy Mr. Whitman (you'd be forgiven for guessing he's a librarian) has spent two decades deep in conversation with troubled kids, trying to help them steer clear of lock-up.
By now, he might be the only living middle-aged person who quotes a rapper without appearing completely ridiculous.
Counseling, by the way, turns out to be just one of the options at Mr. Whitman's disposal. He also can direct struggling teens and families to drug or alcohol programs or other community resources.
In his spartan juvenile court office, he explained: "We handle everyone that's not on probation, all the kids the cops don't bring in."
Felonies go straight to court.
Almost every other juvenile case - including the bewildered walk-in parents at the end of their rope - gets sifted in Mr. Whitman's office.
At this point in his career, he can barely stop for a gallon of milk without encountering families he met in court.
"I see people I know all the time. People usually say, 'Are you Fred Whitman?'•" he said, smiling slyly, "and I say, 'Wellll, did I help you?'•"
Desperate parents who seek his help have sometimes told him 911 operators directed them to him - by name.
"The longer I'm here, the better it is. I know tons of people. It's not unusual, when someone comes in here, I know their brother, their aunts, their mother."
It's fair to call Fred Whitman the de facto gatekeeper of juvenile court.
e
Once upon a time, children misbehaved.
They skipped school, blew curfew, swiped candy, sassed their parents.
In the eyes of the law back then, it was pretty easy: Many cases could be lumped under charges of truancy or unruly behavior.
"In the beginning, [a kid charged with] murder was a big deal," Mr. Whitman remembered. "Word would spread among the staff, who'd all want to go see the kid for themselves."
Accordingly, juvenile court has changed too.
"Now we've got people in the building with guns and sticks," he pointed out, shorthanding the court's heightened police presence with references to firearms and nightsticks.
In trying to help the families who pass through the court-entrance metal detectors and land in his office, Mr. Whitman is often guided by a "social assessment" form - yes, he works in a bureaucracy, and yes, there's paperwork.
Meant to harvest basic information about kids' lives and families, the form is Mr. Whitman's springboard for teasing out the true problem. Example:
"I had a mom in here because of her kid's dope problem. She was going on and on and the kid said, 'You're just mad because I'm smoking your dope,' which turned out to be true. So it's not a kid-smoking-dope problem anymore."
Rustling the single sheet of paper with a 64-item checklist, Mr. Whitman said:
"Once you finish this, what you're [officially] here for is usually beside the point."
Surprisingly, perhaps, he said most kids are candid. But that may have to do with how deeply the court administrator probes for answers. Take physical abuse, for instance.
"I don't ask, 'Have you been or are you now being beaten?' Because it's not uncommon for kids to say, 'Oh, no.' But when you ask specifics- when you ask about electrical cords or belts - then they go, 'Oh, that. Yeah, sure.'•"
Finally, this troublesome observation:
"I ask every kid I see who's over 11: What's six times nine? And at least 90 percent - at least - don't know. Of the kids I see? Oh yeah, that's typical."
e
Mr. Whitman is a hometown boy who graduated with a degree in criminal justice from the University of Toledo. That's where he also earned a master's degree in counseling, but his license lapsed long ago.
"I knew I was never going to go into private practice," he explained. "I really like what I do here."
He has worked with kids in one capacity or another for 32 years, 20 of which have been in his current job.
"Years ago, when I was [a child-welfare caseworker], I had this mother because rats had bitten her baby. I still remember, there were beer cans that had been thrown in the crib."
Mr. Whitman recently saw members of the same family, who still face "the same issues" - which, as anecdotes go, may be an odd segue to his two guiding principles:
"I believe people love their kids," and, "I think everybody is doing the best they can."
Mr. Whitman has seen the toll taken by ignorance and poverty.
"A lot of people are here because they're poor. Most of my clients always have been. I've had people who don't know what school their kids go to. And if their kids are in special ed, they seldom know the diagnosis."
But he acknowledges the effects of marginal parenting over generations.
"When I meet people, I don't assume they have certain skills. You have to start with a lot of people on real basic-type stuff."
He has, for example, written "contracts" for parents who promise to hug their children daily, or simply bid them good night.
"I get kids in here, you ask them, 'Do you love your mother?' 'Well, yeah.' 'Does your mother love you?' And I've had a number of kids say, 'No, she doesn't.'•"
Such grave revelations can come about after children's arrests for what Mr. Whitman calls "goofy stuff."
Recently, he said, a teen showed up in his office accused of smiling.
"Now, he wasn't arrested for smiling," conceded Mr. Whitman, "it was 'being disrespectful.' But I believe the kid. I believe what he said about how it went down. And really, the kid was just smiling."
Similarly, he said, kids have been hauled in by school officials for failing to tuck in a shirt, smoking a cigarette at a bus stop, and even passing gas.
"I know schools are really overwhelmed with people's behavior. I know that. But we get a lot of goofy stuff," Mr. Whitman said.
If children end up in juvenile court for technically legal reasons, their path there sometimes has little to do with law-breaking, sometimes leading Mr. Whitman to be blunt.
"Remember just a few years ago," he has reminded parents, "when this kid still thought Santa Claus came down the chimney - and you ain't got a chimney? And now you want him to run his own life? Not gonna happen."
Oddly enough, he said, parents are more likely to argue with him when he compliments their kids. He recalled a father who, in presenting a laundry list of his son's failings, inadvertently revealed some parental shortcomings.
"And so then the dad said, 'So, whaddaya think about this kid?' And I reached across the desk and shook the kid's hand and said, 'Congratulations! You're a wonderful guy!'•"
As the parent of three adult sons, Mr. Whitman credits fatherhood for helping him at work.
"My experience with them has made me significantly better at this. I mean, they're all great kids," he said, grinning, "but there wasn't a perfect one in the bunch."
Roberta de Boer is a Blade columnist.
Contact her at:
roberta@theblade.com
or 419-724-6086.
First Published April 19, 2009, 5:09 p.m.
