Local youth featured in new TV movie

A special red carpet screening of "America" will take place at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on Saturday, Feb. 28, from 7:30 to 11:30 p.m.

Proceeds will help raise money for St. Peter's Home For Boys. For ticket information and to RSVP, call Everett or Norma Andrews at (313)-846-6942 or e-mail g.everett@sphb.org.

Michigan Chronicle
By Patrick Keating

Red carpet screening set at Wright museum

The film stars Rosie O'Donnell as a therapist and Ruby Dee as the first foster mother of the main character, a boy named America, who has endured both abuse and neglect in the child welfare system.

According to executive director Gregory Everett, the facility was contacted several months ago, before filming started, by a site location manager affiliated with Sony pictures and Lifetime Entertainment who wanted to do research on residential programs in Detroit. He said the filmmakers learned about St. Peter's by Googling residential agencies in Michigan.

"The basis for that research is so they could get an idea of what a boys' home really looks like," said Everett. "What it feels like, what goes on there. They were doing the legwork to really authenticate the movie since it's about a boy who's been in foster care and residential homes."

He added that the location scouts and some of the assistant producers fell in love with the place. Everett then put the film people in touch with assistant executive director and therapist Crystal Mosby and therapist LeShone Hall, who had a role in the movie as a therapist. Both helped provide information about a therapist's job.

"They actually rewrote a lot of the story based on my assistant executive director and her experiences," Everett said.

In addition to using the building and grounds of St. Peter's Home for Boys as a filming location, (as both the exterior of the movie's residential facility and the site of a nursing home), the filmmakers offered non-speaking roles to some of the boys living there. According to Everett, six or seven of them appear in the film.

St. Peter's has a capacity to house 27 boys, specializing in the 11 to 19 age range, who stay an average of ten months to a year. Everett said those boys referred to St. Peter's are abuse and neglect wards who usually have been through several layers of foster care and/or relative placements that have not worked out.

"So they'll get referred here to have more contained, intensive services," he said, adding that kids St. Peter's sees often come through residential agencies and are often in an emotional upheaval because they've been through several layers in out-of-home placements.

"So we're working through not only doing therapy with them to work through their issues at being removed from home, but also having some of the damage already done by being placed over and over again," Everett said.

Older boys at St. Peter's are prepared for independent living, with help in developing resumés and interviewing for jobs. With younger boys, efforts are made to reunite them with their families if the court deems that is appropriate or to put them into either a foster or adoptive home. Everett said the goal is to return them to the most family-like atmosphere.

Most of the interiors of the film's residential facility were filmed at the old Doorstep shelter in Highland Park, which used to be St. Luke's Hospital. A house in Pleasant Ridge also served as a location.

St. Peter's Home for Boys is located at 16121 Joy Road and has provided residential care for displaced youth since 1950.

A special red carpet screening of "America" will take place at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on Saturday, Feb. 28, from 7:30 to 11:30 p.m.

Proceeds will help raise money for St. Peter's Home For Boys. For ticket information and to RSVP, call Everett or Norma Andrews at (313)-846-6942 or e-mail g.everett@sphb.org.