Woman Spends Life Overcoming Barriers

Angel Harper has been running into obstacles her whole life. Losing her child to adoption is only the latest setback.

For the first five months of her life, she was a blue-eyed, golden-haired baby with an adoring father.

“He called her his ‘little angel’ and the name just stuck,” said her mother, Marilyn Harper.

Then the baby was stricken with spinal meningitis. The doctors said she would lead a normal life, just be slower than the other kids.

But she grew up mildly mentally retarded in a society that ridiculed her daily.

Harper, raised in Spokane’s East Central neighborhood, was taunted and teased by her own brothers and sisters, and a long list of others.

Her mother divorced, and Harper’s stepfather sexually abused her when she was 10. After raping her, he gave her pocket change to keep her quiet.

The abuse ended after Harper summoned her courage and broke the silence. She went on to earn a diploma from Ferris High School - one of her proudest achievements.

After spending time in a group home, she pushed out on her own, maintaining an apartment with limited help. She could read, write and type. Within a couple of years, she was balancing a checkbook, too.

“Angel’s a fighter,” Marilyn Harper said. “She knows she’s different. She knows she has to work twice as hard as anybody else to prove herself.”

True independence seemed within reach - until Harper became pregnant and the boyfriend disappeared.

Child-protection officials seized Harper’s baby, triggering a grueling, two-year legal battle. It ended Wednesday, with a judge terminating her parental rights following a four-day trial.

Sitting through the testimony of experts who doubted her abilities reminded Harper, 26, of those childhood taunts.

“I was used to it,” she said, “because I’ve been teased since I was a little kid.”

Her maternal instincts, though, are respected by her six brothers and sisters. In recent years, she baby sat their children, and did the same for neighbors.

“I’d come home and my kids would be clean and fed and happy. They can’t tell me she doesn’t know how to take care of a child,” said older sister Connie Engleman.

Today, Harper shares a tidy North Side apartment with her cat Mowser, a couple of parakeets and a tank of tropical fish. She lives on state disability income supplemented by odd jobs.

She has a new boyfriend, Darrel Douglas, who goes bowling with her once a week. They talk about getting married one day.

For now, dreams of starting a family are on hold. She is on the contraceptive, Norplant, to avoid another ill-fated pregnancy.

But Harper still is fighting. Next month, she hopes to earn a driver’s license. She and Douglas are looking to buy a house. And she vows to keep going to parenting classes.

“So they can’t say I wasn’t interested in learning about children.”