VALDOSTA —
The courtroom is filled with investigators and detectives there to testify, along with case workers, attorneys, counselors, and other court personnel. The children are called in one at a time, some with their parents, others already in the court’s holding cell for previous offenses. Nearly all have their mothers, some have grandmothers, but only a couple have fathers in the courtroom. One young child had no one show for his hearing.
The children face the judge, but so do the parents. When a mother said her daughters shoplifted while she wasn’t paying attention, Ellerbee said that’s the problem right there. The girls are banned from the store until they turn 18 and must attend classes at LODAC (Lowndes Drug Action Council, Inc) which they must pay for, because as the judge says, “There’s a price for being a thief.”
One young man, a repeat offender, had tampered with his ankle monitor and had already been sent to STP, the Department of Juvenile Justice Short Term Program. Ellerbee asked him if he had a brain, and when the young man said ‘yes,' the judge asked him why he didn’t use it? Why did he try to cut off his ankle monitor? “Because I was tired of it.”
The mother of one of the two young boys who cut off a door lock and broke into a home, stealing a game console, games, DVDs, and bicycles was asked by Ellerbee why she didn’t think it was odd when things showed up in her home that she didn’t buy? “What did you think when he rode up on that bicycle?” She replied that she thought he borrowed it from a friend. The judge sent them both to STP awaiting adjudication.
Two pre-teens were caught when a surveillance camera taped them outside a convenience store at 1 a.m. One of them threw a brick through the window and stole cash and cigarettes. When Ellerbee asked him why, he said he “felt left out.” He already has one conviction for simple battery and is awaiting a second burglary charge. With two felonies, the boy was reminded that he could serve five years if he commits another, and he simply shrugged it off. When questioned, one of the boy’s mothers stated that she had four children at home, but no father, to which Ellerbee replied that was part of her problem right there. “A father was there when they were made. One ought to be there now.”
Another mother with a problem teen who she said doesn’t respect her was told that perhaps her live-in boyfriend was part of the problem.
Two young boys broke into four vehicles — while walking to the Ombudsman School, where they had been placed for infractions in school.
A young girl attacked her grandfather, along with her older sister. Her older sister is in the adult system. The young girl is sent back to the juvenile center in Macon.
Children shuffled in and out of foster care. Children who had aunts or grandmothers taking care of them because their mother or father died, often shuffled from house to house. Children with mental issues, anger issues, illiteracy issues. Children from all walks of life, all ethnicities, all parts of town. Children who are sent to facilities for 30 days then commit additional crimes as soon as they return home.
Children of parents who themselves were once in Judge Ellerbee’s courtroom as juveniles.
Local News
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Juvenile Judge Wayne Ellerbee takes the bench the for the last time Thursday bringing an end to his 4 decades of service in the juvenile court system for Lowndes County. Brandon Powers
Discussion
A Day in Juvenile Court
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