Juvenile
May 30, 2001
Child Advocate Goes Extra Mile on Abuse Cases
LOS ANGELES - Dependency Court Referee Valerie Skeba needed someone who spoke Punjabi to help sort out the perplexing tale of two 15-year-old Indian-born runaways who landed in foster care.
Nirja Kapoor
CASA Volunteer
Los Angeles Superior Court's Child Advocates Office
Career Highlights: Volunteer, Court Appointed Child Advocate program, Los Angeles, 1994-present; independent litigation paralegal, 1988-present
Education: University of Southern California, 1988; Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, India, 1982
Age: 39
The girls were claiming they had left home because their parents abused them but now were recanting their story and wanted to return to their family.
Skeba made a quick call to the court's Court Appointed Special Advocate office, or CASA as it is commonly known, which recommended Nirja Kapoor, a volunteer children's advocate for seven years.
Kapoor not only met with the girls in their foster home in Los Angeles but also traveled to the remote Sierra town in Kings County where the parents lived.
"I thought it was really important to have someone who could sit down and speak to [the family] in their own language and understand the cultural issues because this was a case that could have really deteriorated quickly," Skeba said.
"Nirja was able to write a fair and honest report and help the parents get past their anger and focus on a solution," Sheba said. "Without someone like Nirja, the case easily could have gone the other way."
Kapoor's dedication and willingness to go the extra mile is just one reason why the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors honored her last month as Superior Court Volunteer of the Year.
"Nirja epitomizes what we hope for on a case," Sue Thompson, assistant director of the Los Angeles Superior Court Child Advocates Office/CASA, said. "She uses good judgment without being judgmental. She also inspires her kids so that they can do things but doesn't pamper them. She sets expectations and empowers them so they can achieve."
CASA employs 330 volunteers in Los Angeles County through a nonprofit partnership of private and public funds. The program has 65,000 volunteers nationwide.
The volunteers work for the dependency court judge on cases of alleged abuse and neglect to monitor the child's welfare and home environment. Because they handle only one or two cases at a time, they often can give a child more attention than the overworked children's social workers, who must juggle dozens if not hundreds of cases.
At times, that personal attention is what prevents a misunderstanding that could lead to disaster.
The Punjabi case was an example.
Kapoor recalled that, when she first read the case file, she couldn't stop laughing. It sounded like something straight out of a movie from her native India.
"I thought it was hilarious," Kapoor said at the CASA office in Monterey Park, filled with donated toys for the children the volunteers monitor. "I could hear the dialogue in my head."
Bursting into the Punjabi dialect, Kapoor drew her dark eyebrows together and delivered a scene worthy of the popular daytime soaps. Her expressive intonations and gesticulations needed no translation.
It seemed that the girls had wanted more freedom. They found their new American life with their traditional-minded Indian parents unbearably oppressive.
Encouraged by a worldly cousin, who was all of 18, the girls hitchhiked to Los Angeles. Their cousin and her boyfriend were supposed to meet them the next day at a local Jack-in-the-Box. From there, they all would drive to New York, where the girls could live a carefree life, wear short dresses, party all night and never have to study or go to school.
If the cousin didn't show up, not to worry.
All they had to do was throw themselves on the mercy of sympathetic social workers with a teary tale of parental abuse. Authorities would place them with a lenient foster family who would let them do what they want.
But best-laid plans have a way of falling apart.
Stranded when the cousin never showed, the girls called authorities. Instead of a free-wheeling existence, the teens ended up with a family far stricter than their own.
Now, they were recanting their tale of abuse and wanted to go home.
After talking to the girls and their parents, Kapoor, who counts Punjabi among the half-dozen languages she speaks and writes, managed to extract the truth. She was able to forge a better understanding between the parents and their children. The parents agreed to loosen their strict control, while the girls vowed to take their studies seriously.
Kapoor also served as a translator for the court in the subsequent proceedings.
"I have no doubt that, if Nirja had not taken that case, those girls would still be in foster care, and people would be trying to figure out what was going on," Thompson said.
Kapoor, 39, who earns a living contracting out her services as a litigation paralegal, credited her background and experience as an immigrant with helping her work with many of the foreign-born children who enter the dependency system as suspected victims of abuse or neglect.
A naturalized U.S. citizen, Kapoor can empathize with how it feels to be thrown into an alien language and culture. She came to the United States reluctantly in 1982, because her father insisted that she study at an American university. She had a degree from Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, India, and didn't see the point.
After earning a bachelor's degree in 1988 from the University of Southern California, Kapoor realized her father was right. In India, she learned by rote. At USC, she learned critical thinking.
As a CASA volunteer, Kapoor tries to convey that message to the children she sees.
"Most kids feel they have no control or hope," Kapoor said. "I ask them to tell me what they think, for example about why they should or shouldn't go to school. I say when they come back the next time, we will discuss it. I get them to think, and then it comes out as their opinion."
Because many of the foreign-born children are undocumented, Kapoor often works with the Department of Children's Services' Undocumented Children's Unit to obtain birth certificates and other documentation. The Immigration and Naturalization Service needs the information before it can issue a special juvenile visa that makes the child eligible for benefits.
Kapoor's first case started out that way. It's what got her hooked on being a volunteer.
She first met Juan Mulul in 1994, when he was 15. Although born in Guatemala, he couldn't read, write or speak Spanish or English. He spoke only the Kichay dialect of the indigenous Indians.
His mother had died, and his stepfather beat him, so Mulul decided to run away. Three times, he tried to enter Mexico and was caught by border agents. On the fourth try, he succeeded and crossed the U.S. border at Arizona. He made his way to Tucson clinging to the underside of a freight train. Once there, he was beaten and robbed of his only valuable possession, a gold chain necklace.
When police officers picked him up off the streets, all he could say was Los Angeles. He had heard he could find work there and people who spoke his language.
Los Angeles children's social workers placed him in a shelter and called CASA.
Kapoor not only monitored Mulul's progress but also helped authorities obtain a birth certificate so he could begin receiving the benefits afforded legal immigrants.
At Mulul's first foster home, the family began teaching him Spanish because it was the closest language to what he knew. Later, he began bilingual lessons in English.
"When I first saw him, I had to teach him to hold a pencil and learn to write," Kapoor said. "Even now, he has difficulty with cursive writing. He's still at the printing stage."
Tracing a record of Mulul's birth presented another hurdle.
Eventually, Kapoor received help through the Guatemalan consulate. After locating Mulul's baptismal records, the agency supplied the necessary documentation for the INS.
A year ago, Mulul called Kapoor excitedly. He asked her to meet him outside his foster family's home.
As Kapoor arrived in her car, she noticed a silver Mercedes-Benz pulling in behind her. Mulul got out, walked up to her driver's window and handed her the keys.
"Drive my car," he said. "Take it for a ride."
Mulul had bought the used Mercedes for $100 from a local chaplain. The outside looked great, but the interior needed a lot of work. Undaunted, he was fixing it up and told Kapoor that, once you drive a Mercedes, you never want to drive anything else.
Kapoor said she never would want to accept a full-time paying position at CASA. It would diminish her satisfaction in helping people. She also would have to do administrative chores and forego the one-on-one interaction and the joy she derives from watching teens, like Mulul, develop into responsible and responsive human beings.
Next month, Kapoor plans to go to Mexico on her own time to search for birth records of her most recent client, an undocumented 5-year-old girl.
The child ended up in foster care after her mother had abandoned her and was living on the streets.
The mother, a legal U.S. resident, told Kapoor that she had returned to her native Mexico to give birth to the girl because she couldn't afford a U.S. doctor. She didn't have a birth certificate but remembered taking an ambulance to the hospital and being unable to pay.
So Kapoor thought she'd take a short trip across the border and see whether she can find a record of an unpaid ambulance bill that might help document the girl's birth.
"Maybe there's a money trail," Kapoor said hopefully. "I just want to give it a shot. It's only two hours away."
Susan Mc Rae
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