To Hug a Porcupine

James, the horse poisoner, has been asked to leave his current facility. Staff there cannot keep other residents safe with him around. Debbie and Jorge are looking for a place that will take him. Once again, their options are few, and they need a facility that accepts Florida Medicare. If the settlement money were available, the task might be easier. They look forward to the next legislative session. "Are [legislators] going to come through on their promise?" Debbie asks. "Or hold us off for another year? And another year?"

In May, Debbie and Jorge received about a dozen bankers' boxes of documents about their children.

Some of the documents seem ludicrous now, evidence of an ineffective system. There's a letter from DCF thanking Hector Rosa for his "unselfish dedication." There's also a 1996 memo in which a therapist wrote that the boys' case "should be monitored by your most experienced case worker because it has the potential to be a newspaper article that would be detrimental to [DCF]."

Other papers, though, hint at additional worlds of abuse. Like the handwritten notes alluding to another child in Hector Rosa's care who was bruised and acted out in school. Documents explain that Hector and Yolanda Rosa had been abused when they themselves were children.

The lawsuit uncovered other sad epilogues. A caseworker in Georgia called Myra Zuclich once looking for history on the boys' biological mom. Remember, she'd been five months pregnant? That child had died. An adult rolled over and suffocated it during sleep.

People often wonder: Why didn't Debbie and Jorge just give the kids back?

"Give them back to who?" Debbie barks. "To the people who abused them? To the system that failed to keep them safe over and over and over again?"

Jorge acknowledges that no matter how much the children fight off their affections, "they mean something to us." Love, Debbie concedes, has become a somewhat awkward concept. "I still love them with the knowledge that they don't love us back."

A lawyer and spokesperson for DCF, Florence Rivas, says that the department has always had a policy of full disclosure. It's regrettable that it was not enforced four administrations ago, she says, but it is being emphasized under Butterworth's tenure. Debbie, though, says that "ultimately, our family was sacrificed."

Debbie and Jorge try to remain optimistic. They note that their oldest, often-overlooked son had a difficult childhood but is a productive 21-year-old now. Perhaps the other three boys will gain something in treatment, even if it's only a year before Brian turns 18 and ages out — or can sign himself out — of his program. Maybe they'll come out of therapy calmer, less angry.

But things could go the other way too. Experts say child abuse is a tough cycle to break. Many agree that the best hope for attachment disordered kids is intervention in early childhood. Without it, they say, the next stop is often the prison system.

Debbie says the boys, who are not allowed to speak to New Times because doing so would interfere with their treatment, are "articulate and friendly and charming. They could sit in a room and talk to you about the news. Then they can turn around and hurt somebody and never feel it. My fear is that it will be a woman. I don't want someone else's daughter to pay the price."

It is possible that upon release, one of the boys could try to make good on his threats. One form of self-defense would be for Debbie and Jorge to go into hiding. "To be honest," Debbie says, "it's something we've talked about." They'll see how they feel in a year.

For now, they take things day by day. Lately, they'd been feeling good. They thought they'd gotten over the death of the horses. But just today, a pregnant one miscarried. The stillborn foal was deformed. "It never stops," Debbie says.

So they keep their emotions in check, just in case more heartbreak lurks around the bend. Best not to get anyone's hopes up.