BACK FROM THE ABYSS : ...

THE TWO CHILDREN FREQUENTLY HUGGED THEIR mother tightly, their innocent smiles masking the horror of Maria Mercado’s past.

There should be three children. A little girl, 7 years old now, can no longer live with her mother. The girl is growing up somewhere in Los Angeles, but authorities decided she would be unsafe with Mercado. Beatings, sometimes with a wire hanger or an electrical cord, left the girl bloody, her swollen little body broken and her life at risk.

“It was a horrible case, horrible,” Mercado, 36, said in Spanish, her eyes moist at the memory of what she did just a few years ago. “Physically, she looked exactly like me. But I didn’t feel that love that you normally feel when you look at your child.”

For Mercado, who is on parole after serving about three years in prison for beating her daughter, the route to family upheaval was child abuse. For countless other families, the upheaval that causes some parents to lose custody of their children stems from complex problems often associated with substance abuse, gangs, sexual abuse or poverty.

In Los Angeles there are nearly 58,000 children who suffered abuse or neglect and are under the care or protection of the county Department of Children and Family Services, formerly the Department of Children’s Services. Of those, close to 40,000 live away from their parents in various alternate housing sites, including almost 8,000 in foster homes.

Mercado’s experiences, and especially her own accounts of her life first as an abusive parent and now as a convicted child abuser, provide an unusual glimpse of the difficulties in rebuilding such families at a time when reports of child abuse and neglect have climbed in Los Angeles County.

Authorities blame problems related to the poor economy for a 24% increase last year in abuse and neglect calls to the department. A county report last year said the number of neglect cases was 25% higher in central Los Angeles than countywide.

A multitude of public and private agencies seeks to help the children and their families. One new effort, sponsored by the Los Angeles County Children’s Planning Council, involves sending half a dozen or more workers throughout the city and surrounding areas this year to help find ways to do more.

They are bound to hear about families like Mercado’s virtually every day.

Mercado, who remains ashamed of the abuse and the prison time, agreed to reveal her experiences in the hopes of showing other troubled families that help can be found.

In her case, the little girl’s abuse, which included a broken leg, resulted in Mercado being sentenced to six years in prison. She temporarily lost custody of her two other children--a daughter, now 9, and a son, 5--but is raising them while on parole.

Mercado receives government assistance but she also works as a housekeeper at a convalescent home. She attends parenting and family planning sessions, and keeps a tidy, if sparse, apartment in Boyle Heights.

Mercado, social workers and therapists said, offers a classic example of how a seemingly warm, harmless person may become dangerous under stressful conditions. Often there is a childhood secret, perhaps of abuse or neglect, that contributes to the person’s reckless behavior, they said.

Helping people like Mercado control their anger typically involves detailed, emotional discussions of family history, economic status, living conditions or other personal matters, therapists said.

Armando Acosta, a family therapist at Plaza Family Support Center, works with 28 families, including Mercado’s, whose therapy was court-ordered. The focus is on family reunification, he said.

“They’ve been through the system,” Acosta said. “This is Humpty Dumpty. I’m trying to put them back together again.”

*

Acosta said his cases normally require about a year of therapy involving several hours a week. Some cases require less work, but some need much more in order to determine whether the family can be left on its own, he said.

Basic therapy aims to help individuals control their anger. They learn simple techniques like taking “timeouts” from stressful situations by counting, jogging or doing some other activity--even praying helps.

Mercado spent months after being paroled trying to prove to therapists and authorities that she would not harm her children if she regained custody. Ultimately, her willingness to undergo intense treatment coupled with her deep remorse resulted in her regaining custody of the two children she had not harmed.

*

Mercado said her private sessions brought many tears. Talking about herself taught her that her anger came from the rejection she felt from her own mother, who Mercado says did not physically abuse her but treated her like the “ugly duckling” among six daughters. The counselors encouraged her to release pent-up emotions and begin handling her anger, and her children, in harmless ways, she said.

Now, after therapy, Mercado said she believes her abusive behavior was connected to her own secret emotional scars from growing up.

“My mother was ashamed of me,” Mercado said as she slowly wiped tears from her cheeks. “It was something I had held inside and my poor little girl paid for it just because she looked like me.”

Her two other children moved back in with her in August.

“If they’re bad, I give them timeout. I send them to their room,” she said. “Or I might count to 10. Or try to talk out the problem. All those things I didn’t know.”

An individual’s progress generally is monitored by social workers, therapists and even law enforcement authorities. He or she is expected to keep regular appointments with officials, as well as receive home visits.

Mercado meets her therapists at least once a week. The children are included in the treatment at times, partly so that authorities can be sure they are not being harmed.

“They check the children but they don’t harass me,” Mercado said.

Mercado is now believed to be better equipped to be a mother and is moving on as best she can.

Gloria Ornelas, director of the family support center at Plaza, said Mercado was impressive because she got a job, attended counseling regularly and was determined to get her children back. Mercado was exposed to training she had never received before, Ornelas said.

“We’re not producing any magic,” Ornelas said. “I think she’s a very strong person. She’s just been isolated.”

*

Several officials said there was no reliable measure of recidivism in such cases. Each one involves too many factors: severity of abuse, frequency of treatment and psychiatric status of the parent and child, they said.

“The capacity to predict, ‘Will she hit again?’ is not a hard and fast set of rules,” said Jeanne Giovannoni, a professor at the School of Social Welfare at UCLA. “The vast majority of people are not going to kill their kids. They may hurt them in other ways.”

Karina L. Walters, a social worker and a doctoral student at the School of Social Welfare at UCLA, said it is impossible to guarantee that abusive behavior will never happen again.

“Abuse isn’t just about losing control and anger management,” Walters said. “It’s about power.”

For Mercado, power over her daughter was about all the power she ever had.

*

Born in Mexico, Mercado came to Los Angeles in the early 1980s looking for work cleaning homes, maybe waiting tables. A downtown restaurant and a pub provided her with money and a social outlet: She met the man who would become the father of her three children.

The couple began living together. But after a few years, with her first daughter, Vanessa, only a few months old and a second child on the way, Mercado was sentenced to prison for selling cocaine and heroin.

Mercado’s second daughter, the one who would later suffer the beatings, was born in prison. The girl lived with relatives until Mercado was paroled after serving about 18 months.

Mercado remembered immediately resenting her second daughter, who everyone agreed looked so much like her.

“At first, I didn’t kiss her or caress her, but I didn’t beat her,” Mercado said. “I would look at her and I would say to myself, ‘Why can’t I care for her?’ ”

The beatings began when the girl was about 2 years old.

“She would cry. Anything she did bothered me. I didn’t have the patience,” Mercado said. “Each time it was like hate. I couldn’t look at her. Then she would be bleeding and I would kneel and cry.”

After a friend learned what was happening and called police, the girl was taken into custody by county officials and placed in a foster home. When Mercado received her six-year prison sentence, the children’s father took Vanessa and the couple’s son, Roberto, who was born before Mercado went to prison the second time, to live in Mexico.

Mercado has been out of prison about a year and she will remain on parole for a total of five years. Authorities gradually allowed her to spend time with her children until finally allowing them to move in with her in August.

Mercado, whose counseling and supervision is ongoing, said she felt empty without her children. The children’s father remained in Mexico, she said.

“The abuse is not going to happen with them because of the preparation I have now,” she said.

As Mercado spoke one recent Friday night, the children tossed a ball to each other, watched television or squeezed up close to their mother on their small sofa. They asked their mother what they would do on Saturday. Will they go see a movie? Go to a park? How about shopping?

At different times, Mercado played with Vanessa’s ponytail or rubbed Roberto’s head. They all giggled and laughed.

“I love her a lot,” Vanessa said in Spanish. “She treats us well.”

But Mercado said she will never forget why she lost one daughter. The girl lives with adoptive parents.

“I’m never going to stop paying for this,” she said, admitting to nightmares. “I’m going to be paying for this the rest of my life.”

Mercado said she is determined to do right by Vanessa and Roberto. Her goals include studying nursing, improving her English and receiving a high school equivalency diploma so she can give them a better home.

Mercado hopes others will learn from her experiences.

“I know it’s embarrassing,” she said. “I want to do only good now.”