Jail or Reform School

When I told the delivery guy at my work where I was going to in Tel Aviv, he seemed concerned -

"Don't go there at night. All the male prostitutes work there."

This guy knows all the bad areas where the drug addicts and prostitutes hang out in Jerusalem too. He also warned me about Mesillah, the girls reformatory, that holds the toughest girls in Israel until they are 18.

"Don't let your daughter go there - the girls are the worst. They beat up the staff. They come from terrible homes"

Since my daughter was 13, she has been giving me chronic heart palpatations. From hitchiking all over Israel, to shoplifting, to getting caught with a knife trying to enter Teddy Stadium and putting graffiti inside one of Jerusalem's malls, I had hoped to get her some help. There are girls who avoid going to these reformatories – and mainly some parents – due to stigma, won't have "their" kids in "those" places. But who knows where they end up in life afterwards?

"Those places are for zonot(whores). Your daughter isn't one of those." said her boyfriend to me, trying to make me feel guilty for trying to get her into one of these institutions that have an abundance of therapy and social workers and psychologists. I was quietly glad she seemed a goody-goody in his eyes.

"Why can't she stay home with you?" asked his Morrocan mother

That mother obviously has no idea what it has been like for me to get phone calls nearly every week from the police station in Talpiot in Jerusalem to "come and pick up your daughter".

I walked into Mesillah today – situated in Moshav Ora at the edge of Jerusalem – the place where those "awful" girls are. My daughter had just finished her three months court-ordered stint at Tzofia, a temporary holding place for teenage girls-at-risk until they can assess them well enough to see which place is most suitable for them. The staff unanimously decided she still needed a strong place which would protect her against the outside world.

My daughter, who is now nearly 16, cried when we met yesterday, put all the blame on me for her going to where she was going.

"It's your fault that I'm going to this jail!" Her clear blue eyes overflowed with tears. I cried with her.

She could not see that it was her actions that got her there in the first place. Of course I equally felt bad that she can't go to a more normal place, and felt distressed that her future resume won't show one of the nicer schools in Jerusalem like the Gymnasia, Academia or even Rene Cassin – anything but that place.

Mesillah is situated in a beautiful, ancient building – it looks like a Turkish Khan from the 19th century. The view is phenomenal. The rooms are clean and spacious. Only two girls to a room. Each time we peeked into a classroom the teachers seemed warm and loving and I saw a young student teacher I recognized from Israeli dancing, hugging one of the girls and looking at another telling her "I have hugs for you too" which the girl gladly took her up on. In the summer there is swimming every Thursday, and there's a three-day camping trip on the beach in Tiberias. There are classes in cooking, baking, cosmetics and hairdressing, aside from readin', writing', rithmatic. But there are rules. Lots of rules. Which makes it difficult for girls who don't abide by any rules – like my own daughter. She's miserable because she will only get to see her boyfriend once in three weeks. And she is in their system for two years – until she turns 18. She could "graduate" to a hostel, which means she could get out every day to an outside school. But that depends solely on her behavior. I do hope, when she goes there next week to begin the next two years of her life, that she understands this and will try her best to work on herself. She'll be better off than the rest of the girls she hung out with that aren't getting any help – in the long run.