Parents Imprisoned By Grief

The horror of prison is nothing compared to what happens within when it comes to your children. It is the most mind numbing and heart stopping of any form of helplessness when you know that your children are in danger and you can't do anything to save them.

Ashley Lindenberger's fear for her two kids was rooted in her own childhood experience of being raised by foster parents in 18 homes.

"Some of them were abusive, and some of them just didn't care," Lindenberger said recently in the visitors room of the Denver Women's Correctional Facility.

So when she was sent to the Buena Vista Boot Camp for a methamphetamine conviction last spring and her 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Alize Vick, and infant son, Anthoni Vick, went to a Colorado Springs foster home, she was tormented by guilt and constant anxiety.

Within months, her worst fears were realized: Alize died from a severe head injury, and her child's foster mother was charged with murder.

The Denver Post