Starting today, we are bringing you a story so disturbing that it sometimes will be hard to read. It was even harder to report.
For "A New Dawn? A Kentucky mother’s struggle through drug court," two Herald-Leader journalists spent 3½ years following Dawn Nicole Smith, whose addiction to prescription painkillers landed her in Fayette County Drug Court.
Sobriety requires an individual to act. While getting to the point of change isn’t pretty, the most shocking parts of Dawn’s life are routinely echoed in Kentucky’s drug courts, jails and prisons - and, briefly, in the Herald-Leader and other news media. Most often, they are reported in the sterile context of a few paragraphs about an arrest or, sometimes, a death. That language dulls the true horror of an addict’s life and the effect addiction has on family members. This series goes much deeper, chronicling the despair of a struggling soul.
So how did we get here?
In January 2003, photographer David Stephenson took pictures at one of Fayette County Drug Court’s regular graduation ceremonies. At the ceremony, pictures of participants were flashed on a large screen. The "before" pictures were poorly lit, police mug shots, most of dead-eyed people with despair on their faces. The "after" photos were, mostly, a collection of smiling faces so changed it was sometimes hard to recognize them. Intrigued by the transformations, Stephenson wanted to show you how someone gets from one place in life to the other.
In fall 2003, he and reporter Mary Meehan began talking with Fayette County Drug Court officials and Judge Mary Noble, its founder, explaining their goal and providing samples of their work. After about six months, the Administrative Office of the Courts, which oversees Kentucky’s drug courts, gave its approval for a reporting project. Meehan and Stephenson were to be given unlimited access to one willing drug court participant, including his or her court appearances and records, which usually are closed to the public. No other drug court participants could be photographed or identified without their permission. (Most declined.)
As caseworkers interviewed potential participants for drug court, they also asked whether they would like to be the focus of the Herald-Leader story. Several agreed. Dawn Nicole Smith, 21, was ultimately chosen because she had three children, which the journalists hoped might encourage her to work toward recovery.
The reporter and photographer made it clear to Dawn and the court that they were not there to enforce drug court rules, but just to observe her life. No agreements were made to keep anything off limits, or "off the record." The paper did agree not to publish anything until Dawn completed drug court. As it turns out, Dawn had a near record-setting tenure in the program, which usually takes about a year and a half.
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.
In the newspaper, the six-day series - "A New Dawn? A Kentucky mother’s struggle through drug court" — 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.
Dawn told the journalists from the beginning that she wanted to share her story if it might help others. Her life has been open to the reporter and photographer since March 2004. All of the highs and lows would eventually be exposed. Even when some members of her family pressured Dawn to withdraw from the story, she stuck with it. In the beginning, the journalists had no idea of the family dynamics that would complicate Dawn’s journey.
And while many sad and disturbing things ultimately took place, the two never saw Dawn break the law - except for not restraining her children in car seats. Dawn’s extended family was under review by drug court staff, including home visits, most of the time. State social workers were called to investigate the family several times independently but found no reason to take action. Meehan and Stephenson had frequent discussions between themselves and with editors about what to do if they witnessed something that needed to be reported to authorities. If Dawn’s children had appeared to be at risk, they would have been bound, like all citizens, to report it to the state. And they wouldn’t have hesitated to do so.
Casual readers might dismiss Dawn as being apart from the mainstream. But she is somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s mother. Somebody’s wife. And, in a state with educational challenges and a high incidence of substance abuse, she’s closer to mainstream than some readers might like to admit.
That fact was reinforced over the years as the journalists told others what they were working on. Many had loved ones who had been taken by drugs down a dark road much like Dawn’s. Some never came back.
Sharon Walsh
Enterprise Editor
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