The Child Catcher: A Fight for Justice and Truth by . .

. .

Author

The Child Catcher: A Fight for Justice and Truth

Andrew Bridge, author

Book Website |

Details

Adult; Memoir

The Child Catcher is the true story of the fight to rescue the children confined to a violent and secretive institution in the rural South. Andrew Bridge’s bestselling memoir, Hope’s Boy, told the story of his survival after he was taken from his mother, who struggled with schizophrenia, and was left to foster care. Bridge was first confined at one of our country’s most notorious children’s institutions, MacLaren Hall. Now, in The Child Catcher, he chronicles his role in the longest-running, most bitterly fought mental health lawsuit in American history. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bridge joined the small team of civil rights lawyers representing the children of the Eufaula Adolescent Center, a violent and secretive institution in the rural South, against the State of Alabama. Eufaula was a place Alabama had refused to surrender. Parents were lured into sending their children there, unable to get them back. Thousands of children went through Eufaula, just as thousands went through the institution that Bridge survived as a boy. The fight for justice led him through squatters’ camps in backwoods and into the lives of families caught in a permanent underclass. He sat with children as they struggled to explain what had gone wrong in their lives. In this David and Goliath battle, The Child Catcher is the story of Bridge’s personal redemption and the hope that justice for children is possible.

Reviews

Bridge, back with his second memoir, after Hope’s Boy, shares his experience working as an attorney for wrongfully institutionalized boys and girls, while reflecting on his own time spent in a “holding facility for foster children” and the trauma of being separated from his mother, starting at age six. Bridge explores his time at Harvard—where he worked "to forget being a boy who had been put in another institution”—as well as his role in one of America's longest-running court cases, against the State of Alabama, when, in his first case as a lawyer, he confronted the state’s Eufaula Adolescent Center for its “long and well-known history of violence” and “history of covering up that violence.”

Bridge’s writing is eloquent and impassioned, powered by deep empathy for the victimized children and parents he represents and welcome clarity and precision about the legal complexities. He never shies away from sharing his own life story as a catalyst for his work defending children’s rights, and this conviction serves as a gripping narrative throughline. Poring over files, striving to speak with uncooperative staff members, and suffering through false motions for protective orders filed against him by the state, Bridge details his efforts to stop Eufaula’s “abuse being inflicted on children.” His account of the devastating effects of institutionalization is shocking—and will ring alarm bells for readers.

Through comprehensive details on the history of injustice and legal battles against mental facilities—specifically in Alabama—Bridge constructs a moving story of corruption, abuse, and a hard-hitting call for reform: “The deliberate destruction of childhood would not be blotted out by time,” he writes, “All of it would be condemned. What Alabama had done would be written into history.” Bridge’s most inspiring task is his determination to give silenced children a voice, an opportunity for freedom, and hope for justice. Equally heart-warming and heart-breaking, this is a full circle story of triumph that readers won't soon forget.

Takeaway: Powerful story of justice, for children trapped in a failing mental healthcare system

Comparable Titles: Dorothy Roberts's Torn Apart, Alisa Roth's Insane.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

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