One of my Calla Lilies, Tina,  was sexually abused from the time she was 7 until 14 years of age, when she reported the abuse and was removed from the foster home.  She has had a difficult time with illegal drugs or legal drugs without a prescription for years.  Tina has been under probation for using drugs and failed her urine test.  So she was sent to jail for four months waiting for a rehab bed.  When a bed became available, a friend took her to the rehab about three hours from Tuscaloosa; she was told she would have to go back to Tuscaloosa and get some prescriptions she needed before being admitted to rehab.

We have someone who has been locked up for four months suddenly out and about waiting to go to rehab.  She went to the doctor and got her prescriptions, but meantime, she was admitted to the hospital for some serious stomach problems.  She was admitted twice in about two weeks.  She was supposed to go to rehab again last week, but the rehab was sending its staff to some training conference and couldn’t take her until Wednesday, October 15.

She has now been out of jail and waiting for rehab for three weeks.  We in the family have all been worried that she would mess up, and I think she probably has because she did not go to rehab yesterday as she was supposed to.  Now we will have to see what the court is going to do.  Will they still allow her to go to rehab or will they revoke her probation and send her to prison?  Her offenses have all been related to drug abuse.

One statistic I mention in the book is that victims of sexual abuse are 26 times more like to suffer from drug abuse than the average person.  So now we wait to see what the penal system will do with her.