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Highlands Today

A Courageous Journey

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

Judy Santiago is a fifth grade teacher at Cracker Trail Elementary School in Sebring.

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By BUD MORGAN

For Highlands Today

Published: October 6, 2008

In 1962, Judy Ortiz, a child of Puerto Rican immigrants, was born into homelessness in lower Manhattan of New York City. Her mother was homeless as a consequence of her father's drug addiction.

During the first years of Judy's life, she and her mother lived on the roofs of tenement buildings. They had to rely on the good will of others for their food and clothing. Homelessness was not uncommon for many immigrant families in New York City in the 1960s and earlier. It was a rite of passage.

Judy describes those first three years of her life as "a period of deep darkness." During those three years, her family increased by one - a sister, Jackie. The birth of a sister meant nothing more to Judy than a new person into her life to share in the misery.

Three years old represented a period of several milestones in Judy's young life. It was when Judy's mother left her husband and found a new husband. Three years old was when the family moved into an actual apartment - a place where Judy's mother still lives. It was when Judy first recalls the physical abuse by her mother. Three years old was when her new stepfather first entered Judy's bedroom and molested her - a horror that was to be visited upon this child until the age of 16.

In families where child sexual molestation occurs, it is not uncommon for the victim's accusations to be dismissed and/or not believed by other members of the family. Judy says, about the hundreds of nights of molestation: "I sat traps in my room in hope that, when my stepfather came into the room at night, the noise of my makeshift trap would arouse the attention of others. Unfortunately, I was the only one who seemed to hear the trap go off."

The horror continued. The damage upon the innocent child continued to build night after night and year after year. As in the case of her earlier homelessness, Judy describes this horrible period of her home life as a "time of deep darkness.

Keeping Up Appearances

In spite of all the emotional upheaval in her family, the children were always dressed well and were mannerly. No one ever suspected the chaos that ensued behind closed doors.

"School was my refuge - a way for me to forget," says Judy.

She was always excited about learning and looked upon school as a challenge. Although her mother was physically abusive, she was also a hard taskmaster when it came to the children's schoolwork. She insisted that all homework assignments were completed and would accept nothing less than excellence in grades. On the surface, this sounds like an admirable maternal trait. The devil, however, is in the details.

Judy said she was always stressed about her grades, even though she was a good student and applied herself diligently to her studies.

"Once, while in high school, I received a grade of eighty in physical education," she says. "My mother was so mad that she came to the school and actually beat me up in front of my class. To this day, I don't know how she got away with such behavior. Years later, I ran into that teacher. He never mentioned the incident. He just said that he remembered that I was a good student."

During Judy's early childhood, her mother once caught her husband in bed with Judy. She did nothing about it. Judy was left to believe that molestation was normal behavior. Also, at the age of 13, she was allowed to dance with men in bars and dance halls. Her mother once cautioned her to, "not let the men get too close.

Time To Go

Depression is often the consequence of the obstruction of love and happiness by the prolonged abundance of fear and evil. In New York City in the 1960s and '70s, darkness enveloped Judy Ortiz and robbed her of her childhood. Three months before her scheduled graduation from high school, Judy walked out of high school and never went back.

She was an honor student and had received the Regent's Award for being one of the very top students in New York City. Although her step-father was no longer in her life, the stress of her mother's physical and emotional abuse was too much to endure for even one more day. One month after leaving school, Judy took the General Educational Development (G.E.D.) examination and received her diploma.

Judy was now 18. Her horrific childhood did not prepare her to make wise decisions. Out of sheer desperation, she married the maintenance superintendent of the building she had lived in as a child. Judy recalls: "desperation does not make a solid foundation for marriage. Nevertheless, Judy Ortiz became Judy Santiago. He was 34. It was a marriage of two people with similar life experiences. He, too, was Puerto Rican. He, too, had been abused as a child. He, too, came from a homeless family.

On her first date with her soon-to-be husband, he violently slapped her in the face, simply because of something she said or did. This was the first of many subsequent beatings that she was forced to endure in her marriage. Abuse begets abuse. Dysfunction begets dysfunction.

Soon, Judy gave birth to the first of five children in this marriage. Homelessness, abuse, and poverty do not prepare families with even the most basic fundamentals of personal finance. The pay of a building superintendent in a slum area of New York City does not go far in paying for food, clothing and rent for a family.

Her husband was a hard-working man but had only a rudimentary education. It was inevitable that the family would face harder times. They certainly could not afford rent of $750 per month. Eventually, the family became homeless. For three months, they wandered the streets and flophouses of New York City. Judy thought, "What a terrible life. I am back in darkness once again."

Anything remotely resembling a normal life seemed to be far away in some distant galaxy.

After three months on the streets, they got back on their feet temporarily, but - once again - they returned to the darkness. They found a place to live in a dilapidated building occupied by crack addicts. They managed to find a room high above the street level, which afforded minimal privacy. The walls were badly worn - entirely absent of drywall. The floors were nothing more than lightly covered floor joists. Unlike the previous episodes, this darkness had visitors. The family shared their living space with roaches, huge rats and foul, violent drug addicts.

A Taiwanese slumlord purchased the building and, in return for maintenance services, provided living space in the laundry room downstairs for the Ortiz family. There they found the comfort of orange crates to be far superior to the floor joists in their previous room. Eventually, Judy found work in a mailing service company. She barely made minimum wage. However, with her husband's meager salary, the family was on their way to financial recovery.

Beginning Of The End

At the age of 31, Judy Santiago - with the solid assistance of her very private belief system - emerged into a new awakening. It was then that her sister, Jackie, first confessed to being a victim of their step father's acts of sexual molestation. At last, after three decades, Judy had someone with whom she could share her darkest nightmare. At the same time, Judy confronted her mother about her stepfather's horrible acts. Denial can often last for lifetimes. Tension between mother and daughter endured.

Armed with her new awakening and the revelations by her sister, Judy visited the Zerox Copy Center. She took a sheet of paper and wrote the following: Stepfather's name, address, telephone number, and place of business followed by "This man is a child molester!" She requested 500 copies. She told the clerk, "If I can plant just one seed that could serve to prevent another child molestation by this man, then it is worth every cent." She then proceeded to distribute those copies throughout every local neighborhood where her barber stepfather could possibly be known.

Gradually, the physical abuse by her husband subsided. In 1992, the Santiago family moved to Florida and purchased a home in Sebring. Judy decided to return to school and received an associate's degree in the area of nursing assistance. She quickly discovered that she was not happy with a career in nursing. She earned her commercial driver's license (CDL) and drove school buses. Additionally, she did the job of interpreting for migrant students in the Highlands County School District. That led to her employment as a paraprofessional within the district in an innovative parental assistance program.

It did not take long for Judy to discover that, as a parent, she was her mother. Judy recalls, "I didn't abuse my children, but I was very much in their face when it came to their educational responsibilities."

When her daughter began to hang with the wrong crowd, she got into some serious trouble at school - trouble that led to her being expelled. Judy immediately knew that she had to change the direction of her own life. She listened to her heart. She owed her life to education, and education would become her life's work "come hell or high water."

With financial assistance from the Highlands County School District and some scholarships, Judy obtained her undergraduate degree in education. She was Phi Beta Kappa from the University of South Florida. She did not stop there. On her own, she pursued and acquired a master's degree from USF. Judy Santiago is now doing the "work of her heart." She is an elementary teacher at Cracker Trail Elementary School in Sebring.

In the words of Richard Demeri, principal at Cracker Trail: "Often people do not look at teachers as being human beings, but Judy Santiago is a wonderful human being who brings compassion, intelligence and skill to the classroom. I am so proud to have such a wonderful and caring person on our staff."

Judy and her husband recently divorced. But, true to her character, Judy said, I wish that my ex-husband could further his education and be rewarded in the same way as I have been. They have walked, side-by-side, through an evil and perilous journey. The two emerged from their marriage with a wonderful family. Thankfully, they have an amicable relationship - a rarity in today's society.

Judy said that she has learned a tremendous lesson from her life experiences. She also shared that she still has issues. One of those issues is, "I still wonder how anyone could love me."

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