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Allie Sin - Foster Home Runaway


--on the web


Genesee County, Michigan -- [nationalcitynetwork.org]- When adult filmmakers were looking for the perfect new girl next door in 2004, they had no trouble spotting Stephanie Draheim, [aka Allie Sin] a freckle-faced 18-year-old from Flint.

But finding the same runaway foster child turned into a frustrating game of cat and mouse for the state Department of Human Services and an end result that state Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan told The Flint Journal is "very disturbing."

For 20 months, Draheim flew under the state's radar, running away at age 15 and ending up in Florida, more than 1,000 miles from the social workers who were charged with looking out for her.

By the time she was discharged from Michigan's foster care system in 2004, Draheim was headed to X-rated stardom, performing in 13 different pornographic films that year. Some may have been filmed while she was still an 18-year-old ward of the state, a Journal review of court files and other documents shows.

"Whenever I see a story like Stephanie Draheim's, it's like somehow we all failed her," said Karen Bunker, an attorney whose Child Advocate Team briefly represented her in Genesee County Family Court.

Corrigan called Draheim's case an example of what can happen to foster children who run from the system set up to protect them from abuse and neglect. Too often, she said, they find trouble -- even death -- as they look for a place to stay and money to survive on their own.

Draheim was one of 15 children from Genesee County and 230 from Michigan were missing from foster care when Corrigan, as chief justice, ordered local family judges throughout the state to step up efforts to find and keep track of runaways in late 2002.

Today, even more -- 19 -- are missing from the county, and the state's numbers are steady. Some, like Draheim, have been on the run for more than a year.

Corrigan said foster children who run away in Michigan today are more likely to be found than they were three years ago. She doesn't fault the judges or the system in the Draheim case, but things aren't perfect.

DHS officials will talk only in generalities about missing foster children. They would not discuss how they lost track of Stephanie Draheim, what efforts were made to find her or why she was allowed to stay in Florida once she was found there.

Court files indicate that DHS in Genesee County received a report from Florida almost four months after it made an inquiry in late 2002, indicating Draheim's home there was approved for her to stay in -- but her grandparents moved in 2003, and Draheim moved in with a friend.

A top DHS official now says supervision of kids in the system has improved.

"We want to engage them around planning for their future (and) find a placement for them where they will not run," said Mary Mehren, manager of Foster Care and Children's Protective Services for the state.

"The (missing) children are typically 14-17, typically more independent, and when we intervene and remove them (from home), they pretty much have been living on their own (already)," Mehren said. "When you place them in a foster home that is typically more restrictive, ... they rebel against that."

The Flint Journal could not reach Draheim despite attempts to contact her through relatives, a former agent, former foster parents and an apartment complex where she has lived in Florida.

DHS records show the state considered Draheim missing from Aug. 10, 2001, when she was just 15, until caseworkers found she had run to Florida.

She had been there before: It was where her mother had taken her when she was a baby -- and where her grandmother, Sue Rushton, had rescued her before she turned 2.

Court supervision of Draheim continued until May 2004, and she continued to be a ward of the state until July 12, 2004, the same year adult films featuring her started to be released.

The last reports filed in Family Court by DHS said Draheim was not employed since quitting a job at Domino's Pizza, and noted social workers have had "no face to face contact."

Neither had Bunker, whose Child Advocate Team took over representation of Draheim just months before her case was dismissed.

CAT contracted with the county in an effort to improve representation of children, promising to meet face to face with them -- something that hadn't always been done here.

In Draheim's case, Bunker recalled confusion about Draheim's whereabouts and no information on where she was staying.

"You look back and wonder, is there anything you could have done that could have made a difference if you took one extra step?" she said.

The call from Draheim's mother was chilling.

In a handwritten letter to Genesee County Family Court, Rushton, formerly of Montrose, said her daughter, Kristen Walton, called her in an "unstable condition in 1988, asking her to come immediately and take Draheim and her older half-sister back home with her.

"I flew the next morning and returned the same day with the understanding I would care for them until she could put her life in order," Rushton's letter said.

Neither her mother nor her biological or legal father did.

One caseworker wrote in a report that Draheim had "no contact whatsoever with her mother. ... No gifts ... no financial support ... no telephone calls."

Rushton, who could not be reached for this story, told the court that her granddaughter needed to know someone would be there for her.

"This baby needs love and stable living conditions," she wrote soon after taking Draheim in.

But Rushton, who had money problems, was later evicted from her own home. By 1996, Stephanie was living with her biological father, Robert Draheim, in a Flint mobile home park.

Court records indicate a caseworker started the process of taking her from her parents and putting her up for adoption after tips that Robert Draheim was leaving his daughter at home alone and driving drunk with Stephanie in his vehicle.

Like most children over age 11 in foster care, Stephanie Draheim was never adopted. She lived in six foster homes and ran away from at least two.

"She was intelligent, but the more intelligent they are, the more trouble they can get into," said Rodger Mead of Burton, one of the last foster parents Draheim stayed with.

She was careful with her possessions, keeping everything she had locked up. Mead suspected Draheim was stealing, too, before deciding to end the foster care arrangement after one month.

"She came here with about eight boxes and tried to walk out with 12," he said. "She was into possessions, and, of course, I can see why."

Cindy Kelzer of Fostoria said she and her husband considered adopting Draheim when they took her into their rural home in the Thumb in parts of 1996 and 1997.

"She was just a very sad little girl, and there was nothing we could do," Kelzer said. "She made it impossible for us to keep her."

Draheim shoplifted from a flea market and a local grocery store before she was a teenager, ran away and "had a lot of verbal abuse for us," Kelzer said, but the family was still attached to her.

They found a therapist to talk to Draheim and brought her on a family trip to Cedar Point even after she had been returned to live in a state institution.

And after Draheim ran away from the Judson Center, she called Kelzer in the middle of night from a gas station on Woodward Avenue in Detroit, asking for help.

Kelzer picked her up and brought her back to Judson, a nonprofit organization that works to place children in foster care.

"She didn't really have anywhere to run to," Kelzer said.

An aunt of Draheim said she thinks Stephanie "just wanted an answer" from her parents: "Why did you leave me?"

"It's very sad," she said. "It's put me in tears many times."

It's difficult to say when Draheim's involvement in adult films started, but she's credited as "Allie Sin" in 13 adult movies released in 2004, according to the online film information site Internet Movie Data Base (www.imdb.com).

By January 2005, another Web site operator was selling Draheim's images, using the name "Naughty Nati" on a subscription Web site that continues today, charging customers $24.93 for monthly access.

She's recognized among "famous people from Flint" in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, along with filmmaker Michael Moore, boxer Chris Byrd and others.

A foster parent and attorney who have known Draheim identified her for The Flint Journal as being "Allie Sin" in photos.

Corrigan said she never realized Michigan's problem with children running away from foster care until the death of Heather Kish, who was killed while missing from foster care in 2002.

The Supreme Court justice helped set up the first special docket for runaway foster children in Wayne County and expanded it to the rest of the state soon after.

Corrigan said there is "very good cooperation with DHS" today and statistics show 75 percent of kids that go missing are eventually found.

"Would I want it to be zero (missing children)? Of course," she said. "I don't know how to get it to zero."

In September, a seminar will showcase the most successful programs from around the state for finding missing children and keeping them from running.

"Stephanie's case is very dramatic, but all these kids (who age out' of foster care) -- we know more than half are homeless ... they are having children out of wedlock, they do not complete their education," Corrigan said. She called it a recipe for disaster