Schylar Canfield Baber remembers everything about the moment he was taken away from his family.
“I can remember the police raid on our trailer,” Schylar said. “I can remember my footie pajamas, the feel of my feet along the ground as I walked to the police car. I can remember my mother being placed over another police car and being handcuffed, and she got smaller as the car pulled away.”
He was 6 years old. One of his few photos from that period, showing him and his little brother smiling and wearing matching shirts, used to be one of his favorites. But now he notices the bruises on his brother’s head and his own full set of metal teeth. His parents claimed he fell off a picnic table.
That police raid when he was 6 started Schylar’s journey into Montana’s foster care system, a system that failed him repeatedly...
...Despite the terrible hand he’d been dealt, Schylar found ways to survive and thrive. He beat the odds, graduating from high school and college. He earned a master’s degree from the University of Montana and became an advocate for foster kids....
...Schylar spoke at a Challenge Helena conference in 2015 on “Adverse Childhood Experiences.” Called ACEs, it’s an idea, based on research by the Centers for Disease Control, that there’s a strong relationship between the trauma kids experience and their adult health, behavior and causes of death.
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