The Child Catcher: A Fight for Justice and Truth
Sep 2024 · Simon and Schuster
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A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
The Child Catcher is the true story of the fight to rescue the children confined to a violent and secretive institution in the rural South.
Andrew Bridge’s bestselling memoir, Hope’s Boy, told the story of his survival after he was taken from his mother, who struggled with schizophrenia, and was left to foster care. Bridge was first confined at one of our country’s most notorious children’s institutions, MacLaren Hall. Now, in The Child Catcher, he chronicles his role in the longest-running, most bitterly fought mental health lawsuit in American history. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bridge joined the small team of civil rights lawyers representing the children of the Eufaula Adolescent Center, a violent and secretive institution in the rural South, against the State of Alabama.
Eufaula was a place Alabama had refused to surrender. Parents were lured into sending their children there, unable to get them back. Thousands of children went through Eufaula, just as thousands went through the institution that Bridge survived as a boy. The fight for justice led him through squatters’ camps in backwoods and into the lives of families caught in a permanent underclass. He sat with children as they struggled to explain what had gone wrong in their lives. In this David and Goliath battle, The Child Catcher is the story of Bridge’s personal redemption and the hope that justice for children is possible.
The Child Catcher is the true story of the fight to rescue the children confined to a violent and secretive institution in the rural South.
Andrew Bridge’s bestselling memoir, Hope’s Boy, told the story of his survival after he was taken from his mother, who struggled with schizophrenia, and was left to foster care. Bridge was first confined at one of our country’s most notorious children’s institutions, MacLaren Hall. Now, in The Child Catcher, he chronicles his role in the longest-running, most bitterly fought mental health lawsuit in American history. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bridge joined the small team of civil rights lawyers representing the children of the Eufaula Adolescent Center, a violent and secretive institution in the rural South, against the State of Alabama.
Eufaula was a place Alabama had refused to surrender. Parents were lured into sending their children there, unable to get them back. Thousands of children went through Eufaula, just as thousands went through the institution that Bridge survived as a boy. The fight for justice led him through squatters’ camps in backwoods and into the lives of families caught in a permanent underclass. He sat with children as they struggled to explain what had gone wrong in their lives. In this David and Goliath battle, The Child Catcher is the story of Bridge’s personal redemption and the hope that justice for children is possible.
Ratings and reviews
5.0
1 review
Literary Titan
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October 3, 2024
The Child Catcher is a book for anyone who wants to understand the devastating impact of institutionalized child neglect and the fight for children's rights. Bridge’s writing is both beautiful and tragic, and his advocacy work shines as a beacon of hope amid the darkness. But be warned: this is not an easy read, emotionally speaking.
About the author
Andrew Bridge’s first book, Hope’s Boy, was a New York Times bestseller and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. After growing up in foster care, Bridge began his legal career representing children in Alabama state psychiatric hospitals and mental health facilities. Later, he became the executive director of The Alliance for Children’s Rights in Los Angeles, where he worked to expand free legal services to children in foster care and poverty. Bridge is a founding director of the New Girls Academy School, California’s first all-girl college preparatory school for pregnant and parenting teens. He is also a cofounder of National Adoption Day. He currently serves on the Arizona Foster Care Review Board. A graduate of Wesleyan University and Harvard Law School, Bridge is a Fulbright Scholar and a resident at Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. He lives with his partner, Dr. Scott Young of the Mayo Clinic, in Phoenix, Arizona.
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