The Child Catcher

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.