NAKED CITY A Visit With Tinky’s Mom

ty. where a man named Anthony Jimerson tipped back a bottle of 90-proof bourbon and allegedly told the child, “Drink it like a man.” ty. where a man named Anthony Jimerson tipped back a bottle of 90-proof bourbon and allegedly told the child, “Drink it like a man.” Tinky died four days later after suffering irreversible brain damage. Jimerson was convicted of murder and sentenced to !0 years’ probation.

In Austin, after her acquittal, Tinky’s mom had exulted in her vindication. She had said she was going home to her apartment in Evennan, just south of Fort Worth, to get her life back on track. To get a job. To persuade child welfare workers _ to give her hack her other two kids. Some jury members went home and prayed for her future, and her kids’ futures. Unfortunately, the future hasn’t turned out the way everyone had hoped. This month. Tinky’s mom goes to trial again. This time, her other children, Tinky’s brother and sister, are at stake.



PATRICIA ANN GRIFFIN, AS SHE is less widely known, leans forward languidly, her elbows on her knees, unconsciously forming a protective human tent over her unborn child. She is pregnant with her fourth child in seven years, her third out of wedlock. But if Griffin’s posture seems maternal, her actions are clearly not. As “Family Feud” drones on, she tears open a fresh pack of Salems, then casually lights one up. Smoking is a vice, she says, that she’s had a long time. Not unlike the beers she says she pops open when she”s down or depressed. which is quite often these days. “I sit and have a beer, trying to get my mind off all of this,” she says.

“But it’s still going to be a problem. Still going to be right there.” The smoke swirls about the living room, the ashtray stacks up with spent butts, and the conversation turns to the couple of glasses of champagne she had recently at a bridal shower. It’s hard not to ask Griffin, who despite her admissions is clear-eyed and nicely dressed, an obvious question: Does she know about the effects of tobacco and alcohol on unborn babies? “I’ve got a pamphlet around here somewhere that 1 picked up at the doctor’s office.” she says casually. “But I don’t know where it’s at.”

Okay. Patricia Griffin is not exactly Mother of the Year. But even her lawyer, Quentin McGown. will tell you that. He’ll also tell you she’s not the world’s best client: She’s moody, uncooperative, and worse, not always truthful. Last April, during her criminal trial, she managed to hide her pregnancy from everyone, including the reporters, the jury, and her lawyers. “A few of the women reporters came up to me and asked me if she was pregnant,” McGown says. “I guess they could tell by looking at her, 1 asked Patricia straight out if she was, and she said no. When I found out she was, 1 wasn’t very happy about it.”

That’s because Griffin’s legal troubles were, in some respects, just beginning with her acquittal. The Tarrant County district at-torney’s office is going after her again, This time, in a case that goes to trial October 22, | the state is asking a jury to forever terminate Griffin’s rights to her two other children, 3-year-old Rashad. who has been living with Griffin’s mother since Tinky’s death, and 1-year-old Rachel, who is in foster care.

McGown says the termination case is patently unfair. He argues that since a jury cleared Griffin of Tinky’s death, she should get her kids back. The stale says it’s more complicated than that. Just because she’s not going to prison doesn’t mean she’s a good mother. They also point to the fact that seven | months after Tinky’s death, while child welfare was reviewing her case, she gave birth to a baby girl who tested positive for cocaine. Griffin doesn’t dispute the results.

“I had done drugs the night before Rachel was bom because she was born three days after Tinky’s birthday,” she says. “The whole week I was very upset. Very bitchy. Just didn’t want to be talked to or anything.” She smoked crack cocaine “once or twice,” she says, “just that week.”

Child welfare workers and the DA’s office don’t believe her. They say that she has re-fused, on several occasions, to take regularly scheduled urine tests (she says she didn’t have time because she had a ride waiting); that she is erratic about attending parent and drug counseling sessions and even super-vised visits with her kids (she says trans-portation is a problem); that she even showed up drunk and belligerent at one parenting class (she says she’d had those two glasses of champagne and got angry because the counselor was lecturing on alcohol poisoning in children). The classes and visits and tests are all part of a service plan, crafted by child welfare, that Griffin agreed to follow so she could get her kids back.

If she’s blatantly violating the plan, of course, that will be revealed with the birth of the new baby, due October 19, just three days before the trial. Law enforcement officials won’t speculate, but it seems likely that a positive drug test will mean removal of the infant and an infinitely easier battle for the state over the other two. “They won’t find anything,” Griffin says Firmly.

Even if they do. McGown says he’ll fight them just as hard, “I don’t care if she’s the worst whore, drunk, whatever.” he says. “She’s still the mama. Mothers are the way they are, but they’re the only one you ever get.” He is convinced that Griffin is being unfairly targeted by a powerful and vindictive state machine that, clearly embarrassed by Griffin’s earlier acquittal, is willing to spend countless more tax dollars going after her-despite the fact that thousands of mothers who are drug addicts and alcoholics are being allowed to bear and raise children with no consequences, “If we took away all the children of addicted parents, we’d have no more kids to take away,” he says.

The DA’s office agrees. “I wouldn’t have foster homes for all of them,” says Shawn Richards, the assistant district attorney handling Griffin’s case. “But it’s not just [Patricia’s) cocaine usage. It’s everything. We were all hoping she would make positive changes in her life, but she hasn’t done that.”

This is true. She has no job. No income. No man. No place of her own to live (evicted from her Everman apartment shortly after the trial, she shuttles between the homes of her mother and brother, in violation of her service plan). She has no savings, no car, nothing. Except, of course, her kids. “They were spoiled, but that’s all,” says Griffin. “I admit that; they were spoiled rotten. And they were well loved and taken care of.”

Unfortunately, that statement rings hollow. Because if they were so utterly and completely loved, why, then, is it so hard for their mother to fulfill the simplest requirement of her service plan-to go to the child welfare office every week to visit with her daughter? Is it, as her lawyer believes, unfair to expect a troubled welfare mother to live up to the middle-class expectations of a bunch of idealistic caseworkers? Those caseworkers don’t think so. Plenty of women-some of whom don’t speak English, have no money, and have no transportation-never miss visits with their kids. They take the bus; they walk; they get there. Others, like Griffin, just don’t. “Thai’s the age-old question,” says Wayne Hairgrove, child protective services program director for 18 counties, including Tarrant. “We lay the problem out there, and you know what you have to do, so why don’t you do it? If we knew the answer to that, we could solve a lot of cases.”

But until they do know the answer, the state will continue to ask juries to determine those mothers’ fates. Mothers like Patricia Griffin, who, as she sits home day after day. smoking cigarettes, popping beers, doesn’t quite seem to grasp the seriousness of her situation. “I don’t have a fear,” Griffin says, her gaze shifting to the TV. “Because they really didn’t have a real good reason to take my kids, and I still don’t see one.”