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PACE girls turn around their lives

By Carl Orth | The Suncoast News

Published: May 2, 2009

NEW PORT RICHEY - One teen in the PACE Center for Girls program spoke about how she first tried drugs when she was 8 years old, while her alcoholic mother worked as a prostitute and her father was in and out of prison.

Another girl told about sexual abuse by a brother and her suicide attempts.

During Wednesday's annual Friends of PACE Breakfast, about 175 people heard such heart-wrenching stories from young women ages 12 to 18 who have turned their lives around through the PACE program.

Donations are needed more than ever to help such girls because of state budget cutbacks, Danielle Taylor-Fagan, executive director of the Pasco PACE program, told the audience. More troubled girls are landing in juvenile courts, Taylor-Fagan said. Decades ago the ratio was 1 in 10 juvenile offenders was a girl. Now the ratio is 1 in 3.

"PACE girls are not bad girls," Taylor-Fagan remarked. "They've had bad things happen to them."

The girls learn they have to break "cycles of self-destructive behavior," Taylor-Fagan commented.

"PACE girls learn to value themselves as individuals," she added.

Not surprisingly, troubled girls first arrive at PACE feeling betrayed, abandoned and distrustful, Taylor-Fagan said.

One PACE student, Maki, recalled her impressions of her teachers the first day at Pasco PACE. "I thought they were all crazy and full of crap." But she came around. Being at PACE was "not only a privilege, but a second chance at life."

Now 18, Maki has served the past three years in a JROTC program and worked as a case clerk last summer at a sheriff's office. She looks forward to the future, possibly with a career in the military.

Another student, Stacia, recalled how she blamed herself for her prostitute mother's alcoholism. She shouldered a lot of responsibility at a tender age looking after siblings. She tried drugs at age 8 and became an alcoholic by age 11.

When she first walked into PACE, she was impressed how a teacher shook her hand. It was the first time she had been respected, she said. The teachers never thought of her as a lost cause.

Now 17, Stacia looks forward to graduating high school and going to college to study to be a crime scene investigator.

For more information about Pasco PACE, call 727-849-1901 or go online to pacecenter.org/joomla/pasco.

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