Fostering Gay Youth

Local advocate S.E. Rafferty is raising funds to launch Home O’ Hope, a project to establish a safe place for LGBT youth in foster care, many of whom endure high levels of discrimination and neglect.

Annette Thomas was a 17-year-old high school student living in Portland, Tennessee, a small town about 40 miles northeast of Nashville. One day, while talking on the phone with her friend about a girl she was dating, there was a knock on the bedroom door. 

“My foster mom said, ‘When you’re done with that phone call, I need to talk to you,’” says Annette. “She pulled out the Bible and started giving me the lecture: I was going to Hell if I continued down that path. She didn’t want me to have any more association with my girlfriend or my best friend, who was gay.”

Castigated for having a girlfriend and isolated from her friends, Annette became severely depressed and attempted suicide, landing her in a psychiatric hospital. Her parents then sent her to a Christian counselor who specialized in conversion therapy, a controversial treatment that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation.

But Annette refused to reject her identity as a lesbian, so her foster parents kicked her out of the house. “It was the place I called home. I would never have imagined with the revelation that I was gay, I wouldn’t be welcome in my own home.”

Annette was moved into a group house for foster youth. “I was the only gay person there, so it was kind of awkward,” she says. “I didn’t feel comfortable bringing my girlfriend over — people would talk behind my back and snicker when I had people over.”

According to Child Welfare Information Gateway (CWIG), five to 10 percent of the 175,000 youth in the U.S. foster care system are LGBTQ. CWIG cited a 2009 study revealing 56 percent of LGBTQ foster kids have been homeless at some point, feeling safer on the streets than living with a foster care family or in a group home.

“It was hard that one statement can make a difference in how a person is treated,” she says of being found out. “I was not acting rebellious, I was not harming anybody. I was working, going to school, enjoying prom, enjoying friends. I had a girlfriend — just normal teenage stuff.”

Unfortunately Annette’s experiences are frequent, as S. E. Rafferty, co-founder of Home O’ Hope (HOH) explains. “Foster kids have experienced upwards of 10 transitions if they are an adolescent — either going back and forth between the system and their own home, or between homes within the system. And that’s non-LGBT youth. You put the LGBT part in there, sometimes that number will double.”

Rafferty, who has a graduate degree in counseling psychology and is a licensed addiction counselor, decided to launch HOH after witnessing two foster kids living in a group home come out of
the closet.

“One of them was 13 years old, he came out as bisexual. The other was 17 years old, he came out as gay,” says Rafferty. “As a means of trying to protect the kids and trying to protect the home, the two kids were treated like sex offenders. e

They couldn’t even watch television without staff supervision if they were [around] another kid.”

Rafferty adds that the treatment from the staff came from a stark deficiency in training and experience regarding the needs of LGBT youth. “I know, at the heart of it, the hope was to protect [the kids], but there was also a lack of education on the part of the professionals.”

The situation grew worse as other youths in the home began to bully the two kids who came out. “The kids started to feel like something was wrong with them,” says Rafferty. “ They were simply going through normal sexual development like all the other kids.”

In 2008, Rafferty decided to create a place where LGBT foster youth could be themselves. She began raising money for HOH along with co-founder Amy Winchester, also a licensed professional counselor.

One of the first challenges was, and still is, securing a home big enough to house up to eight foster kids and staff. “We started right when the housing market crashed,” says Rafferty, “and now that the housing market has started to boom, it’s out of our price range.”

There have been fundraisers for the project with contributors such as the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association. “If we had between $10,000 and $15,000 more, we could be open within three months,” says Rafferty.

HOH would be different from other foster care homes in many ways, to create a therapeutic environment for the residents. “Because Amy and I are both professionals in this field, the staff would be trained on how they interact with kids therapeutically. We will allow LGBT kids to have their sexuality or gender transition be a non-issue.”

Another goal for HOH is to start a mentoring program within the home. “It really does take a village to raise every kid, and with a project like this, the village is community.”

For Annette, a project such as HOH would have made all the difference. “You need to hear that it’s okay,” she says. “Depression, isolation, suicide — these are things that go through a young person’s mind when they’re rejected for their sexuality. It’s even worse to try and change who they are through Christian counseling.”

Annette now lives in Loveland and shares her story with others in the hope that LGBT kids in the foster care system won’t have to endure what she went through.

“Being kicked out of my foster home because I came out was very traumatizing. I still live with the pain of that rejection 26 years later,” says Annette. “I think this project can make a difference in a teenager’s life — in a
teenager’s future.”

To learn more, visit Home-O-Hope.org