Jailed Woman's Relatives Want Kids

SHERRI ACKERMAN The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jul 11, 2007

OCKLAWAHA - A narrow road winds through the Ocala National Forest, past a fish camp and a hodgepodge of mobile homes and houses lining the shore of Lake Bryant.

In this remote area of Central Florida, an enclave of relatives transplanted from Kentucky prays for the arrival of three little girls.

"We just want to let them be kids," said their aunt, Stacye Scarborough, who will make the two-hour trek south to a Clearwater courthouse today with hopes of winning custody of at least one of her nieces.

Courtney was missing for nine months after her mother took the toddler and her younger sister, Alize, from caregivers approved by the Florida Department of Children & Families and its contracted agencies.

Authorities found the girls and a newborn sister last month in a Wisconsin home, where a woman was buried in the backyard and her son tortured. The girls' mother, Candice Clark, 23, was arrested with two other adults and charged with murder and child abuse.

Scarborough wants the girls returned to Florida, where she and her husband, Lance, are raising their four children on 7 acres dotted with a swing set and two playhouses built by their father.

His parents and a great-grandmother live next door. Her parents reside on an adjoining lot. They all agree there's enough room - and love - for the girls.

"It's a beautiful place to raise children," said Scarborough's mom, Cynthia Walker, who ventures that the girls will be cuddled so much that "their feet will never touch the ground."

But Scarborough, a 30-year-old college-educated stay-at-home mom, has a tough fight ahead. Wisconsin child welfare authorities want to keep the girls, ages 3 months, 1 and 2 1/2 .

DCF officials said late Tuesday they will not oppose the request. "Wisconsin and Florida, I think, would prefer the child to be with a family member," said DCF spokesman Al Zimmerman.

But neither child welfare agency wants to uproot the girls again, he said. There's also the issue of the mother's pending criminal case, he added.

Scarborough is furious. For months, DCF and the Safe Children's Coalition, which oversees local foster care for the state in Pinellas County, had overlooked her as a caregiver for the girls.

Courtney came under state care in February 2006 after her mother was arrested in Clearwater on fraud charges and outstanding warrants from Kentucky.

"They told me that since my sister still had her parental rights, she could choose where the girls went," Scarborough said Tuesday in her parents' front yard.

Courtney, then 1 1/2 , and Alize, just 3 months, went to live in Lake County with friends of their mother's who had known her less than a year. The friends, Cynthia and Mark Martell, let the girls slip away, later telling child welfare workers that Clark tricked them into believing she had custody again.

Scarborough never had an inkling the girls were missing.

All the while, Clark, her half sister, was calling her from Maine and Colorado, then in May from Wisconsin, where Clark eventually was caught. No one from Safe Children's Coalition, DCF or law enforcement contacted Scarborough.

Scarborough says she passed an inspection of her home recently by child welfare workers. Now she wants them to do right by the girls.

Let them live with her. Let her give them the home they never had, she says. Her children, ages 4 to 10, can be role models for the girls, teaching them what it means to just be a kid.

"Here they can play sports, get dirty," Scarborough said. "I want them to not have to worry about where they'll sleep at night."

Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com.