Teen Kicked Out of Home For Being Gay, Homeless She Finds Refuge At Homeless Home

 

18-year-old Vicky Price at child welfare nonprofit Great Circle.

Andrew Sullender, Springfield News-Leader 

Caught kissing her girlfriend goodbye on the cheek, 16-year-old Vicky Price said she was kicked out of her home for being gay. After over a year of couch-surfing and housing insecurity, she found refuge at Great Circle, a child welfare nonprofit.

Great Circle, which has operated a youth emergency shelter since 2006, in recent years has noted that many older teens were falling through the cracks of the foster care system in Springfield.

“What we found was 17-year-olds were really not going into foster care anymore because they're kind of getting too old,” said emergency shelter manager Holly Hunt.

In 2017, Great Circle began a transitional housing program for housing insecure young adults between the ages of 16 and 21.

“These are homeless or unsafely housed kids who could be couch-hopping or living on the street. And so, we can take them in our three-bedroom houses we have by Missouri State,” Hunt said.

The 18-month program is focused on making sure these older adolescents finish school, which can be difficult if they don’t know where they are going to sleep on a given night.

“The main thing for that program is to finish school and then hopefully help transition to adulthood. That could be getting a job. It could be going into (learning) a trade, going to college — just to be on their feet when they leave that program,” Hunt said.

Adopted twice, then given an ultimatum

Vicky was first placed in the foster care system at age 3. She was adopted when she was 7 but said she faced physical abuse by members of her new family.

After ending up in the hospital from the abuse at 13, she said she “bounced around” for a few years across Missouri until being adopted a second time by a Springfield couple. Vicky thought she had finally found her family.

“The first year I lived with them, they were absolutely amazing. Before I was forced out of the closet, everything was great. It was wonderful, and I loved being with them. And then it all just changed.”

Vicky said her adopted parents caught her giving her girlfriend a kiss on her cheek, and laid down an ultimatum — she could stop seeing her girlfriend or she could leave.

“They saw me through the window kiss her on the cheek. And when I came inside, they were screaming and yelling at me and telling me that being gay was a sin and I needed to watch how I acted around people because people were gonna think that I was a homosexual.”

Vicky knew that her adopted parents’ religious convictions would prevent them from accepting her, but she “had no idea” they would react that way.

A few weeks later — only four months after her adoption was finalized — she was kicked out.

 “Soon, it became clear to them that I wasn’t going to change, so they packed up all my stuff when I was at school one day and when I came home, they told me to get out.”

Despite only being with the family for a few years, Vicky still calls her adoptive parents Mom and Dad.

“It definitely hurt a lot. Being adopted is supposed to be a one-time thing and you're supposed to be happy after that and you're supposed to find, you know, your family — those people that accept you. Being taken away from your original family in the first place is hard enough. But then I lost another family and then Mom and Dad just threw me away. It just — it definitely broke my spirits for a long while.”

Many gay, lesbian and trans teens end up homeless

Homeless at age 16, Vicky’s story is not too dissimilar from many gay, lesbian, or trans teens. Forty percent of all homeless youth identify themselves as LGBTQ even though just 7 percent of teens identify that way overall.

Anecdotally, Vicky believes an even greater number of her young homeless peers in Springfield are LGBTQ — and that the discrimination they face is a major factor in their homelessness.

“There's a lot of my friends who were — they were given up or abandoned or kicked out for religious differences based around LGBTQ issues, I know it's a lot more common than people think it is. And I didn’t even realize that until I moved to Springfield.”

 Without a home, Vicky bounced around between friends' couches and a series of shelters. Working a full-time job and relying on the city’s public transportation system, she eventually left high school halfway through her sophomore year.

The abuse that landed her in the hospital at 13 left her with severe anxiety and depression, she said. While insisting that the stress of being kicked out “wasn’t the worst depression I’ve had,” she admitted that it “didn’t help.”

Great Circle on Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021.

“Unfortunately, I have a couple (suicide) attempts under my belt. I haven't lived the best life and I didn't have very strong coping mechanisms.”

Learning 'how to be an adult'

But that changed upon getting to Great Circle, she added.

“I honestly don't think I would have gotten on my feet without the program. I was struggling hard enough as it is when I found the program. My depression was at a point where I couldn't even manage it with my medication. I was just done with the world and I didn't want to be here anymore. And I found the program and they convinced me to give it a try.”

Starting in June of last year, she began Great Circle's 18-month transitional housing program. Without the stress of being housing insecure, she was able to work more, get her high school diploma by completing online courses, save money, and “learn how to be an adult.”

According to Vicky, a lot of that learning came from Megan Clark, her case manager at Great Circle.

More: To tackle homelessness, The Kitchen and others offer housing as first step to stability

“(Clark) always picked up the phone. She would drop everything even with her own family to come and be with us if we needed it. She really took us in like her own and still helped us the entire time to get to that independent place we need to be at.”

Calling her “like a second mom,” Vicky said Clark was one of the first adults in her life who accepted her LGBTQ identity and encouraged her to be herself.

But Clark told the News-Leader that she did very little — giving all the credit to Vicky.

“It's very rare that you get someone that's so motivated, which is really cool. She had been on her own for years. She knew what she needed to do. Very little hand-holding with her — I would just give her a task and she'd have it done.”

In fact, Clark said Vicky was looked up to as a role model within the program, especially for clients also in the LGBTQ community.

“It’s extremely common for our youth to be LGBT. Very sadly, it’s still extremely common for kids to be kicked out because of that. And that’s a major reason why a lot of the clients look up to her because a lot of them are in similar situations,” she said.

A lack of services for LGBTQ youth

Asked how she supports and affirms the LGBTQ youth in her care, Clark said she tries to connect them with the GLO Center, the only LGBTQ center in southwest Missouri. But she added there is a lack of services in Springfield.

“There's not a whole lot that even I'm aware of in this area. I do think that that's kind of lacking especially for younger people,” Clark said.

Now living independently in her own apartment, 18-year-old Vicky is moving out of town and deciding on a college — studying either veterinary medicine or mortuary services.

“I guess I can be a little morbid sometimes,” she joked.

Asked if she would try to have contact with her adoptive parents before leaving Springfield, Vicky said that was not in her plans.

“They do live in Springfield. They have not reached out to me and they actually only live about a mile or two away from where I'm currently living. They don’t want me to be a part of their life. And I don’t want to be any part of theirs if I can’t be who I really am.”

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Great Circle helps teen kicked out for being gay find stability