each morning I would awaken to the smell
my 20 year old brothers urine-soaked
diaper knowing each diaper change was a
fist fight in waiting my adopted
disabled siblings need a lot of care
cleaning out bowels and bed sores
suctioning vomit from an aspirating
sister feeding through a hole in the
stomach
looking back I see the many ways my
mother tried to make us look normal from
the outside but to me it was all normal
so when my teachers asked how many
people lived in my house I included the
homeless person my mother said lived in
our rafters and when I was sick it was
because of the spies who laced our hand
towels with pathogens and when I had an
accident in my pants because because of
the nurse put bleach in our ice cube
tray I know why I’m here to do the dirty
work that my mother can no longer do but
needed to have done to get money from
the state and she didn’t hesitate to
remind me of her successful family
planning the adults around me thought I
had an overactive imagination and I was
saying these outrageous things to get
attention never did they consider that
was being fed a fabricated reality
directly from my paranoid mentally ill
mother confused wondering why no one
would believe the reality I was living I
was left to face my reality alone as a
child your world is created by your
parents and if your experience in that
world is painful and stressful then you
go your whole life believing that the
world is just a painful stressful place
so come middle in high school I know I
can’t take this life much longer since
this is normal I must be the problem my
bleeding ulcers plate my bleeding ulcers
painful shingles and tormented
flashbacks
just signs that I can’t handle living
life like everyone else can so I knew
Sakurada belt around my neck and tie it
in the closet and slowly slip out of
consciousness never able to imagine a
better life and somehow the next morning
I wake up wondering why God left me here
and then my whole world changed let’s go
back to my last normal night
my grandma struggles to stand only to
collapse from another hit and kick from
my mother my mother says their
motivation for her to learn to stand by
herself but she never could her agony
continues for hours and in the morning I
find her dead in her bed with the face
locked in horror now she’s freed from my
mother and my mother’s freed from her I
like to think of my grandma as a martyr
her death led to my freedom the question
surrounding her cause of death and my
mother’s obvious motive initiated
investigations into what was happening
slowly my eyes began to open to the
truth I started to see the ways that the
pain of my life could go away and I
began to get hopeful so one day I go for
it I do the one thing I’ve been taught
never to do I talk about what’s
happening in the house a social worker
came to my school to ask me questions
and I told her at my grandma’s suffering
the whole time feeling scared while
hoping to god that she could hear me and
do something well she heard me and she
did something walking through the front
door of my house
I hear her there laughing with my mother
divulging all that I confided in her and
then she gives my mother some advice he
needs to be strictly discipline so he
knows never to do this again knowing the
unfathomable punishment that awaited
Iran and even the social workers were
not friends with my mother could do
little to help they looked for signs of
physical abuse but we had no scars
my mother boasted of her tricks not to
leave suspicious marks tricks she
learned on the job as a Child Protective
Services social worker herself so they
how was I to know that my mother treated
us any differently than any other
child’s mother and they asked me if my
mother hurt me
and I said no as I thought she protected
us from the world that was against us
both how was I to know she was the one
putting the bleach and ice cubes and
besides I grew up being taught to be
afraid of social workers because they
were always trying to take me away from
trial ensued
just like clockwork the social workers
forget to file something or some other
reason for delay delay after delay after
delay this goes on for almost a year the
system is failing we are failing we’re
failing our foster youth growing up in a
fabricated reality that you believe is
normal it’s like living in a world full
of grey tones when all of a sudden you
see a flash of something like glistening
red apples you see color for the first
time you catch a glimpse of what normal
could be if you only live without color
you would never know it and there are
millions of foster youth living in a
gray bleak world statistics show that in
the United States that we are on a
trajectory towards a life of personal
misery and societal drain but it doesn’t
have to be this way currently fostered
children experience post-traumatic
stress disorder at rates similar to war
veterans 500 percent more than the
general population
at age 21 only half of us have a job of
the half who do three out of four makes
less than 25 thousand a year for boys
leaving foster care they are arrested at
rates four times that of other boys and
four girls they’re arrested ten times
that of other girls by the age 21 over a
the children leaving foster care and
landing in jail or living in poverty are
simply continuing their idea of a normal
life stuck in a cycle of desperation if
they do not know any better and how can
we strive for better
and even if they eventually realize
their immense potential there are
institutional barriers to them achieving
success so what can we do to help foster
youth achieve their immense potential
listen listen to what they’re so
desperately trying to tell you believe
believe what they tell you believe in
them and to do all this you must see the
world from their perspective the system
and its social workers speak an entirely
even if we cannot tell you the truth of
our abuse we are telling you the only
truth that we know which is not I am
being physically emotionally and
sexually abused per California well
friends to go 300 AC and D know our
truth is that if that mom says if we
tell you our secrets then we’ll be never
allowed to see her or my brothers my
sisters my friends again how are we to
know how someone should and shouldn’t
touch us that doors are allowed to be
those who see the world in color may be
amazed that there are some of us out
there who can’t and we never will not
to see the world from our perspective to
she heard past my confusion she listened
to me she believed in me she told me
that I had a future that I had a life
worth living and she came to the courts
and she offered me a room in her home
[Applause]
it was because of her I began to gather
the pieces of my life I test out of high
school I got a job and went to a
community college and within two years I
cope I co-founded the county’s first
human trafficking task force which is
still going strong today and I wrote a
law that got passed to increase foster
youth rights and I went from believing
that I would never get into Cal Poly to
now be able to graduate from there this
and I went from believing that would
never get a job to now being the CEO of
the leading tactical drone defense
but hear me I don’t say this to draw
attention to myself I say this to
demonstrate the potential of a foster
youth once the walls put up around us
are broken down and growing up in a
unique world gives us unique abilities
to survive we develop coping mechanisms
that can entrap us in the cycle of crime
but if harnessed can propel us to
success we quite literally know what it
means to be knocked down and to get back
the reality I grew up in had my mind
had my mind constantly looking for
vulnerabilities and instead of seeing
these vulnerabilities as opportunities
for crime I now had a whole color
allowing me allowing me to see I had a
whole new I had a whole color palette to
choose from allowing me to see these
vulnerabilities and allowing me to see
these vulnerabilities and to see that I
had value and because I had value that I
could bring value to the world by
finding and solving problems for example
when the world start going crazy over
drones is recreational toys I saw that
they could be used as weapons for crime
and this insight into the criminal mind
inspired a company that now defends the
and I am nothing remarkable like so many
other foster youth I was put through the
furnace and I came out hot and it takes
a special person to see past scorching
heat to see the hardened steel allowing
us to see a new vibrant normal to
harness the coping mechanisms that we
develop to survive to transform was once
an obstacle into an opportunity to break
the cycle of abuse and to ilish the
the same things that make us vulnerable
to failure are the same things that
clearly children are resilient
but when barriers to our success are put
up by abusive parents when barriers are
put up by corrupt systems when barriers
are put up by poverty we as a society
must stand up and tear those barriers
down the statistics are clear we can’t
afford not to now even though I have
found freedom and success this is my
when I was removed from my mother’s home
it was because the courts revoked her
rights to parent me and my sister
Christina and she was sent to jail for
the Beus of my quadriplegic sister even
so after her release Child Protective
Services left angel with her apparently
she was too young to recognize the views
but they reassured me that one day when
she was old enough to they’d be quick to
remove her it’s been five years and
she’s still there knowing the life that
I lived and knowing the suffering that I
endured I can only assume that she’s
suffering the same there’s nothing I can
do to help her see a normal life so it’s
up to the people around her the
bystanders and her life that can listen
and care enough to save her from the
trajectory of so many other
disadvantaged abused and neglected
children we need one person to step up
to stop living their life just to listen
because our children deserve better
angel deserves better my request of all
of you and my request of each one of you
is to give children the benefit of the
doubt to listen when something seems off
and to recognize when we are talking
about our normal in a way that isn’t we
need someone to reach
to the disaster and pull us out even for
just a moment to show us what normal is
to show us that life is worth living
that there is so much more than the pain
that we know and that we have an
incredible ability to conquer challenges
but only if we can see color thank you [Applause]