Teenage Sexuality
Speakers: Johnny Ashmore, Ozzie Cruz, Richard Pacheco
Primetime Summit 1

Transcript of Proceedings
June 4, 1999

SONNY: Now I'd like to introduce those three young men. These are three young fathers have been, invited by Ron and Jerry to join us today, so you can have a chance to hear their points of view directly from them. So, Richard Pacheco, Ozzie Cruz, Johnny Ashmore, please join us up here. And Richard, bring your son up with you, why don't you? Richard, what's your son's name?

RICHARD: Richard.

SONNY: Richard, Jr. How old are you? Five? How much do you love daddy?

RICHARD JR.: Infinity.

SONNY: Infinity. All right. Richard, how old were you when Richard Jr. came into your life?

RICHARD: Um, well I found out when I was 14, and he came about when I was 15.

SONNY: Are you married to his mother now?

RICHARD: No. His mother left both of us when he was a year and a half and I was 16.

SONNY: Does Richard live with you?

RICHARD: Yes, I have custody of him.

SONNY: What were the circumstances in terms of getting pregnant.

RICHARD: My story starts way back when I was younger. When I was young, I learned a lot of negative things about my dad. My dad showed me a lot of negative things about what a man was supposed to be and the way he was supposed to act. He used to abuse my mom. He was a drug addict and an alcoholic. So I saw a lot growing up. And I got a lot of negativity about what a man was supposed to be like and the way he was supposed to act. So when I was growing up, I thought everything that he did, those were things that men did.

But I couldn't understand how, you know, one minute he was telling my mom I love you, and then the next hour her and him were just going at it. So a lot of times, what I did so my mom wouldn't get it, I'd intervene, and I'd step in. I'd start up with my dad, and I'd start yelling at him, or we'd just get in some sort of argument so he wouldn't take it out on my mom. That led me to do a lot of things that I regret now. I started acting out at a young age, and before common ways, through violence, through drugs, through alcohol, and through sex.

Finding out, you know, that I'm going to be a dad at 14, it kind of changed my life. In a lot of ways, I was happy about it, because I realized, well hey, I'm going to be a dad, and I'm going to do everything that my dad didn't do. I held him in my arms when he was a baby, and I talked to him, and, just my voice, you know, soothed him from crying, and he stopped crying, and, it was like, it was amazing, you know. I'm 15, I'm like, whoa, you know, I have this impact over my little boy. And I held him in my arms. I used to hold him like a little football. And I promised that I'd be there for him, regardless. But I never thought it, it'd be this. His mom left. I was 16, he was a year and a half, and we split up. I guess she wanted freedom, or she just got tired of being a parent, I don't know what it was, I still haven't gotten an answer to this day of what it was or what it may be or what it is. The thing is that, that's when fatherhood really hit me.

You know. I didn't, I didn't think it'd be so difficult. I thought, you know, oh, I'll go find a job, no big deal, get hired, you know, make some sort of money. But I realized it wasn't that easy. Not having a high school diploma, not even having any job experience or skills, finding a job wasn't going to be easy. I thought go to work, yeah, come home and be a family man. But it wasn't nothing like that.

SONNY: How did you know how to be a father?

RICHARD: That's a good one. I didn't know. I didn't know. Everything my dad taught me, I thought that, that's what a dad was supposed to do. So, I figured okay, you know, I got to do all the positive things, because a lot of things my dad did were negative. You know, I love my dad, but I come to realize that he did the best that he could. So what I ended up doing is moving out of my aunt's house. I mean, out of my mom's, and I moved in with my aunt. I got on, welfare, AFDC, CalWorks, any way you want to put it, because I needed to give my aunt some sort of income. But at the same time, I didn't want to work, so I enrolled myself back into school. I ended up going to kind of like a special school, because I needed day-care for him, someone to take care of him. What they call a pregnant minor program. It was a class of 20, there was 19 females, I was the only male. And I loved every second of it, every minute of the day, and everything like that.

OZZIE: I'm 19 years old, uh, I'm the father of a 3-year-old boy, Ozzie junior. We call him Cheek, because he has a big cheeks. I didn't bring him with me today, because it's his mom's birthday today, and right now, my mom's actually looking after him. I'm not with my son's mother, unfortunately. We've been separated since the beginning of this year. A little bit about my history about how I became a father. I grew up out of a family of three, I'm the troublemaker, if you will, that's what my mom calls me. And my brother, who's the oldest, is now at the age of 28, and as soon as he turned 18 years old, he was out of the house, because he was considered an adult, right. And my sister at the age of 13 got pregnant, she was out of the house. And being that I was raised only by my mom, and then my dad wasn't there. I thought I was the man of the house. And so I did things that I saw on TV, What Ron talked about, the money, and the violence, and sex. I became sexually active at the age of 12. I thought that's what made me a man. I didn't have no positive male role model. I didn't have nobody to look up to that had a PhD, that had their master's, that studied psychology, biology, all these things that you take in college. I didn't have none of that.

And so I believed that being a man was, you know, having sex, of course I always lied about having sex, and about having money, and about the more girlfriends you have, the more sex you have, the bigger man it makes you. And at one time and point in my life, is I did believe that. And so at the age of 15, is, I found out I was going to be a dad. And the stuff that Jerry talked about, about you, internalizing your feelings, about your spiritual scarring, because even though my dad wasn't there, and he recently now came back into the picture 18 years later, is that still hurts. And when he talked about building relationships, when somebody actually acknowledges you and tells you that they love you. I'm a person that had, you know, suffered from child neglect.

My mom used to work from eight in the morning to eight in the nighttime. When she come home, it wasn't, hi son, how you doing, you know, how was school, you want me to attend any PAV. It was none of that. So I was neglected, and when I engaged in a relationship, and somebody actually told me, I love you, that felt good. And then to actually have sex, because sex feels good, and then to think about actually having a child, which will provide you with unconditional love, the same way I love my mom, regardless of what she does. I suffered because of that. I felt something empty within myself, and I thought that having a child was going to fill that up.

And I do love being a father. And I do love my son. And what I tell a lot of people is, when I do speak, or whether it's through work, or it's through home, is that I love my son with all my heart. You know he's my everything, he's my son. But, if I could go back to the time he was conceived, I wish I would have waited. And that doesn't mean that I don't love my son, because I do. It's just that I wish I would be older, and have my career already going. Have my PhD, my master's in psychology, maybe be ready to give up all my free time and spend it with my son. But what reality says is I can't, I can't send my son, you know, back to where he came from, or I can't travel back in time, and so I have to deal with my son. And he gives me, you know, he gives me headaches. But the one thing that really gets me now is that me and his mom aren't together. I get to see him four days out of the week, and at nighttime, and, you know, he says his good-nights, right. And he says, good night, daddy, and he tells me in baby talk, I love you, and I tell him, I love you more. And then he says, good night grandma, good night grandpa, but then he says good night mom.

JOHNNY ASHMORE: Hello, everybody. Well, my story is like this. I grew up with a brother, two sisters and myself. We all got, like, different fathers. All right. And then, when I was about four, my mom and my dad kept on fighting and never got along. Pretty soon, I was in foster care. I'm, like, four years old, all right. I'm 19, I got a seven-day old daughter and its hard. I want a kid. Since I was in foster care, I just wanted something that I could love that nobody could take from me because it's mine. So I don't regret that I had, you know, a daughter at a young age. I actually liked it. That's good. I'm not working right now. It's hard. I went to Las Vegas to live with my sister. I quit my job to come out here to see my baby get born. Um, this is hard.

SONNY: Where's the mother?

JOHNNY ASHMORE: She's at home, she just got home from bed rest, in the hospital.

SONNY: Are you going to marry her?

JOHNNY ASHMORE: Yes, because I want to be with this woman the rest of my life. That's the way I

SONNY: Does she want to marry you?

JOHNNY ASHMORE: Sometimes.

SONNY: Did your father live at home?

JOHNNY ASHMORE: He was there for a minute, a couple of months, then he chilled. I was brought up, like, other people telling me things. Like, my daddy never taught me how to read, how to talk to women, how to fight, how to play football, none of that. Another person taught me everything I know. Another, another kid's father taught me everything I know. So, I'm using that experience to teach my daughter, too. And TV shows.

SONNY: One of the words that you keep hearing is hard, it's hard. Something that I don't think we show very much of on television, which is having a baby in this circumstance is hard. Trying to find out how to be a father, how to get a job, how to, how to run a, raise a family and do it all and keep it all going with no skills, with no model, that's hard. Well, let me ask you. What advice do you three gentlemen have for the writers and the producers in this room about how to do better television that would work better for you. Anybody got any suggestions for them?

RICHARD: Um, my thing is to just basically keep it real. Every time I watch a show, towards the end, there's always the way the person gets out of a situation, out of the dilemma, out of the problem. Let me tell you, I haven't got out of my problem yet, you know. Adam, he's five now. And he's lucky if he sees his mom, you know. I mean, he's lucky if he talks to her within a month. She's supposed to come down in July to see him but she hasn't called, she hasn't said anything. My thing is it's really not reality, you know, based. To me, it's like a fantasy world. We call the TV an idiot box, because it feeds you information that, to us, is falsified. It's not true.

SONNY: Do you watch television?

RICHARD: Rarely. When I get home from work, it's how can I finish this schoolwork and get him ready for bed, make him dinner. Some of my jobs cause me to work late, you know, some of the evenings I do work late.

SONNY: Ozzie, you watch T.V.?

OZZIE: When I have time I watch T.V. But we don't have that much time. I have my work schedule and at the same time my studies. But like Richard said, they need to keep it real. And the thing is a lot of times, when we see teenage pregnancies on TV, it's mostly with the focus on the female. And I do understand that going through labor and the nine months is hard. It's also hard for us guys, too, you know, hearing the yelling and the screaming. But also, you know, accepting the responsibility. This child that you bring into this world is not only going to be with you 'til he reaches the age of 18 because, you know, I'm 19, I'm still my mother's and I'm always going to be my mom's son. And my son will always be my son even though he's in his forties or fifties. But basically, it's really hard. A lot of times I think that I am doing good, that I'm enrolled in college, that I have a job, that I'm being responsible with my son, not only financially but being there emotionally.

There's times that I'm thinking that I am a positive role model. But I go to other places. I went to Magic Mountain, the theme park we have here in California, and I arranged for my son to be baby-sitted through my mom. And I got there and I, you know, my mom thinks I dress like a gang member. My pants aren't that tight, not that loose either. And here I am, I have my own business card that says education specialist, I work within my community. I consider myself a positive role model, not only to my son but to other people. And I'm here with my girlfriend, my son's mom, trying with good intentions to go into this theme park and have a good time. And then to get approached by security personnel and, they tell me we picked you like this for a random search. I want to be fully cooperative, so, you know, I follow orders, I said, go ahead and he said, do you have any illegal weapons, narcotics? I said, no, I don't. Feel free to search me. I'm trying to follow, obey all these rules, right, still trying to do the right thing, stay on the right path. And even though they search me, and even though they find nothing on me, even though they checked out my tattoos and everything. If they deny my entrance, and they said that because I'm affiliated with my tattoos that they say I'm affiliated to a certain gang, and even though I haven't been an active gang member for the past three, four years already, they said that would cause trouble intentions to go into this theme park and have a good time.

And so, I says, all right, trying to keep my cool, trying to be respectful and so, I take out my wallet and I take out my business card. And I says, okay, I work for, you know, Family Services, so what does that mean because I'm affiliated with them? And they stay quiet. And when I asked to speak to the supervisors, they denied to take me to the supervisor. And so, I had to ask for the supervisor about three times. The supervisor comes and I request a business card from the supervisor and the supervisor doesn't want to give me his business card. Doesn't want to give me her last name, and tells me I cannot enter the park. Even though that I'm being a good dad and I'm responsible and I am a positive role model, just being myself, being bald and having tattoos, in itself, putting my son out of the picture is hard. You know, like Ron mentioned, you know, driving while being black, while being bald.

Just being an adolescent nowadays in itself is hard, you know. Dealing with stereotypes. They say that all men are dogs, that all men are disrespectful. And I'm here to say, I'm not a dog. And I will break that stereotype any day. And that I am respectful. And even though I am not with my son's mother, that I respect her very much. And I'm going to be there with my son regardless of how I get along with his mom, but I chose to get along with her in a good way. And people put me down and, you know, scar my spirit because when I talk it, I cry about that, because that hurted. I went with good intentions. And I am a positive role model. And dealing with that, imagine if I would have took my son, and for my son to see that, to go through the same experience Jerry did, to get discriminated against. You know, that's reality. That's the things you don't see on TV That's what you need to see.

RON JOHNSON: When boys live in a family where their fathers are absent, or when boys live in families where their fathers are emotionally absent, it develops a father need in them. And they are going to fulfill that need several ways. And one of the ways that they fulfill it is through your medium. They will look for role models. And so, it becomes important to know that, if a child comes from a family, and his father is not there or his father is emotionally absent, one of the things that young man will do, somewhere between the first and the fifth grade, is make himself a promise that whenever he has a child, he will not do to that child what he perceived was done to him. And that's either emotionally or physically abandon that child. And so it becomes important that we highlight that somewhere in a story, because no one is speaking about how desperately these young men want to be fathers.

Now, with the boys who are not fathers yet, that is why we attempt to teach first, what it means to be a man. And that the best place to make a baby is within the context of a family so you assure that the two adults have made some type of commitment to be there. But to ignore their desire and their drive to be good fathers, and to be good men, is a mistake. They're not guys who are just abandoning their children. This young man is caring for a 5-year-old himself. Although he has support from his family, look at what he's doing. This young man is essentially in the same position. Johnny had a place to live in Las Vegas and a job and came back to Los Angeles and was homeless just to be near his child. That's the kind of desire that these three young men represent.

JERRY TELLO: In my community, many people believe that men should be macho, and macho would be from the negative side. That you beat wives and you can do all kinds of things. What you need is an elder man to say, you know, son, that's not the true sense of being a man. This is what you really need to do and say it in the true sense of really rebalancing from a cultural context, the aspect of what true manhood and what true fatherhood is. And just because it's hard and just because you came from a background, doesn't give you an excuse not to be that way.

Because I think we give license because someone's come from poverty or because his racism, because you don't have a dad, that you can act a certain way. And because, you know, guys say to me all the time, you know, she's going off on you, man, she, she's hitting me and all of that, what about her? And I say it still doesn't make it okay for you to be violent with her. And I think teaching through some scenarios and some scenes would be tremendously impactful. Because that carries the message. We then take what you do, we use it in our classes and we show it all over. We say, did you see that movie, did you see this? It reverberates. When we see a good message, we take that.