A Warrior for a Lost Generation

May 26, 2005 -- -- Michael Pressey of the New Jersey division of the Salvation Army says living in Newark is like living in a war zone.

"On any given hour, particularly in the evening when the sun goes down, you come in here, it's like Iraq in here," he said.

But if that's the case, then Pressey is a warrior -- fighting for a lost generation. He helps children who have been abandoned by their parents and raised by their grandparents -- a situation painfully common in Newark.

"A lot of it has to do with incarceration, mental illness, just absenteeism," Pressey said. "But the overall epidemic that hits the city of Newark, and I'm sure is in most urban areas, is violence and drugs."

He also said the state agency in New Jersey charged with protecting children -- the Division of Youth and Family Services -- is sometimes to blame. DYFS works hard to keep families together, but he says sometimes it is too quick to dump children from broken families at grandma's house.

"If you open up that door and you see your grandchild, how could you say no? They don't do it over the phone anymore," he said. "They're playing this guilt game on some grandma."

DYFS director Edward Cotton told "Primetime Live" such procedures were "inappropriate" and would stop. And in the last year, they have.

Pressey's work has him playing everything from advocate to safety inspector to psychiatrist.

Three years ago, he first visited Rose Green, who was raising her grandson RayVaughn. Green wouldn't let the boy outside because she feared for his safety, but Pressey saw how things on the inside were as dangerous as they were on the outside.

In one room, Pressey found a bare bulb covered with a brown paper bag to act as a shade. "That gets real hot, and this could burn up. And you can burn you and your grandmother out of here. You don't want to do that," he told him.

On subsequent visits, a few hours each month, he noticed Green never kissed or hugged her grandson, no matter how much he begged.