Coming Sunday, Oct. 14, the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com will bring you a special report: "A New Dawn? A Kentucky mother’s struggle through drug court." Four years in the making, it was a tough story to report, and it will be a disturbing story to read and view.
At 21, Dawn Nicole Smith has three kids she adores, a husband who’s leaving her and a gut-wrenching addiction to painkillers. In March 2004, she was sentenced to treatment - not time - for forging prescriptions and ordered to Fayette County Drug Court. Since then, with her and the court’s permission, Herald-Leader reporter Mary Meehan and photographer David Stephenson have followed her struggle to stay clean.
So, why are we telling you about Dawn?
Newspapers frequently write about addiction. It is evident in every crime log, every brief about a DUI and nearly every family story with a tragic ending. But rarely do they reveal such an intimate portrait.
Almost everyone knows someone touched by substance abuse. As the stories report, in Kentucky alone, 375,000 need treatment. Because of stagnant funding, only 1 in 12 will get help.
The stories also point out that substance abuse is a leading cause of death. It is a factor in at least half of the domestic violence, child abuse and property crimes committed. Research has found that the most promising - if imperfect - counter to these crime statistics is drug court. Kentucky has invested $56 million in drug courts, which will serve every Kentucky county by year-end.
The journalists spent hundreds of hours with Dawn - both in and out of court. Meehan reviewed hundreds of court documents, interviewed dozens of people and researched dozens of reports on drug court, addiction and substance abuse. Stephenson shot 8,093 photos and recorded more than 10 hours of audio.
The two became so familiar to Dawn and her family that even some of Dawn’s most intimate family moments were witnessed and recorded. Dawn, despite pressure from her family, insisted she wanted her story told if it might help someone else.
The result is an unvarnished look at just how intractable a problem addiction is. In Fayette County, only two out of five addicts sentenced to drug court manage to stay clean. It illustrates the special challenges faced by mothers who are addicts and the effect their addiction has on families.
In the newspaper, the six-part series requires 18 inside pages. Online, the six multimedia presentations total 15 minutes and include 130 photos, plus audio from Dawn and original music by a local hip-hop group, the CunninLynguists.
I invite you to check out the series in the paper Oct. 14-15, 17, 19-21 and online at Kentucky.com. If you want to do something to help those in Kentucky imprisoned by the demons of addiction, I urge you to stay tuned until the last chapter in the series, on Oct. 21. We will have a list of ways that you, your church or community group can get involved.
We hope that while it’s hard to look at Dawn’s story, it will also be hard to look away.
Linda Austin
Editor
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