My 16-Year-Old Sister Is Out Of Control! | KARAMO

Deonna is here because she fears her younger sister, Jaleah, is going down the wrong path in life. Jaleah lives with her sister Deonna and Deonna's girlfriend, Quani. And they say lately Jaleah has been out of control. Deonna believes her 16-year-old sister, Jaleah, is boy crazy. Well, we'll meet Jaleah a little bit later, but first everyone please welcome Deonna to the show.

I feel as though Jaleah is a sex addict and if I can't get through to her, I feel as though she's going down the wrong path to nowhere.

Okay, I got it. So for me, I'm not gonna use the term sex addict 'cause I haven't met her yet.

Okay.

But I heard you say earlier that she's boy crazy.

She's boy crazy.

So tell me, why do you think she's boy crazy?

I think she's boy crazy because she is literally obsessed with romance. Every single thing has to have something to do with being in a relationship, something to do with how boys make her feel. Even from a very young age, everything was about, oh, do you think this boy loves me? Everything is literally about affection.

What other behaviors have you noticed?

Oh my God. I have noticed that when I take Jelia's phone, every single message in her phone is her talking to different boys about different ways that they can please her and her please them. Literally.

You told my producers that she had sex in a staircase?

Yes, in a school staircase.

Tell me about that.

The only reason that I know that she did that is because when I went through her phone, I found her having multiple different social media accounts with like different names. And it makes me feel really scared because I feel as though if you can catfish people and talk to these different people, what else could you really do? I'm afraid that if she is to go out, that she won't come back home.

I can hear the trepidation in your voice.

Yes.

And I can see the passion through how you're You're acting right now because this is your little sister.

Yes, and I love her so much.

Yeah, and I think that's what we have to remember is that this is your little sister that you see. She's 16.

Yes.

Yeah. You sent us messages that you found on Jaleah's phone. Here, I wanna go through these messages that you gave us.

Absolutely.

All right. See if you did stay after school tomorrow, we could have sexual situations and I can give you a hickey.

These are different boys, by the way. They're not the same guy.

Yeah, I don't wanna go too deep in these segments, but it gives me context of what's really going on.

Yeah.

What was your reaction when you found these?

I was scared. I was disappointed more than anything else.

You talked to her about it?

I did talk to her about it and she just lied about everything.

Okay.

And it's crazy because she looks so innocent. She has a really soft voice. She's a very pretty girl. She's highly intelligent. And so she really does know how to articulate herself. And I feel as though she is very, like, I just believe that she's sneaky and very deceptive if you don't know her. You could fall into her spell. My girlfriend that's in the audience, she really plays a major role in this situation with helping me with Jaleah as well. And that's some of the things that she's also said.

Quani, thank you for being here so much.

I really appreciate you being here because I do wanna get your perspective.

'Cause I know from what I read, you encouraged Deonna to take in Jaleah. Yes. Tell me why.

I just felt like she was going down the wrong path. She didn't have no structure, No guidance, no nothing. She didn't have no one to look up to, none of that.

But do you feel like Jaleah's not just struggling with sex? You feel like there's other issues?

Yeah, absolutely.

What are the other issues you feel like?

She's struggling with a lot. It's like a lot going on in her mind. And I be trying to get her to let it out, let us in, you know? So we can help her out. But it's like once we get in and then we try to help her, she go the wrong way.

I'm a teenager. I just turned 16 years old not too long ago. I feel like, why am I getting treated this way when every teenager did the same thing I did?

Audience, so you guys were having sex in the stairwells at the age of 15?

Most definitely wasn't acting like that at that age.

Right, okay, so like, no. That's not a good enough—

You told my producers that you feel like Deonna and Quani don't trust you. Why do you say that?

They don't because they are basing it off of my past on what I— Your past. My past on when I was little and up to this day because I never got help. Nobody never— took me nowhere to go get my mind straight and everybody just left it for me to handle it on my own. And I feel like that that's not okay.

It sounds like you know that you're not acting right, that you're acting out. You're aware?

Yes.

Okay, so if you're aware that you're not doing the proper thing, can I ask you why? Because I heard you just say there's reasons. So I'm gonna ask you why. What are the reasons?

There's reasons because of everything that I've been through since little, the split with my parents, To me bouncing around house to house, to seeing what my mother did growing up, to seeing that my father is nowhere to be found, and now growing up to see that my mother is not even taking care of her own child. Oh, hell with Jaleah. Oh, she, we don't, it's like I felt like I wasn't wanted, like I was not supposed to be there. And when I figured out that my mother was in town all these times, it hurt me and I wanted to go with her because I don't know her. I really don't know her. And when I lived with her for that month, I was trying to get to know her, but she was not paying attention. She was always under the influence with drugs and drinking.

And anytime that she would pay attention to me is when she was under the influence, and I hate it.

Come here. Come here.

I'm sorry. Come here. Come here. It's okay. I know. It's okay.

Thank you.

I don't feel heard. Like nobody, everybody—

Come closer. Everybody looks at my mistakes instead of looking at the background like, oh, this little girl is hurt.

She has been abandoned not once but twice by both parents.

Her parents are not paying attention.

I wanted my mother's attention and her presence. And when I got in front of my mother, it was hell. And I'm looking, I'm all this promiscuous stuff. That was because of little, 'cause she didn't know how to filter herself around people. She had sex in front of me at the age of 6. 6.

I'm sorry.

That's why I'm like this. And then in the last place that they sent me, I got raped and that made it so much worse.

You know about these things?

I did know about this.

You did know?

Yes.

Okay.

And I understand that Kwani and Deonna is trying to help out for me, but I just don't need it from them. I want it from my actual parents.

Yeah, you want it from your mom?

I want it from my mother and my father, but they're nowhere to be seen.

Yeah.

And the reason why I said I'm gonna keep doing this and I'm gonna keep doing that is because I felt like I was put in an adult situation my whole life. I had to find ways to get food by myself with my mother. I had to beg people. I had to beg people. And she don't even speak to me. She ghosted me.

This is so true.

What do you say to all this when you hear this?

I really feel really bad because I know that she's really struggling internally. This is not something that I am ignoring. The reason why she's not in therapy at the moment is because it took a while for me to transfer her information from North Carolina here. First of all, she was homeless or whatever the case may be, but her mother is actually her legal, you know what I mean? But I have legal guardianship now.

My mother missed every single last one of my birthdays because of drugs and alcohol and chasing boys. And that's why the way that I am, and it's not intentional. I'm still trying to adapt to this situation 'cause I'm not used to being in a different state with different people, especially with my sister.

How long y'all been together?

Kwani and I? Yeah. 5 years.

Okay, no, how long have y'all been living together?

She's been living, going on a year now.

A year, 1 year?

Yes, 1 year, literally.

Okay, makes sense. First of all, can I tell you, and y'all gonna, I want y'all to give some applause for this young lady. You are a very smart and vulnerable and beautiful young woman. Y'all are doing the best, but as adults, sometimes we get frustrated, we are at our wit's end, we don't know what to do, and we don't realize that the language we're using reinforces even more negative behavior coming out.

Okay.

Yes, she's lying to you all.

Yeah.

Point blank, we know it. Yes, she's manipulating you all when she can.

Right.

But you do understand that that's not always a negative behavior.

It's a point of protection for her.

She's trying to protect herself. Because that's the only way she's known how to protect herself their entire life.

Do y'all get that?

I get it.

I get it.

How do you feel about it?

I feel like we not the ones that's doing that to you. We trying to give her, we trying to give her a better life.

Growing up, my mother was strict with me and I'm literally just doing what my mother would've done to me.

Yeah.

And that's all I'm doing.

Yeah. But see, your mom was in the house.

She was.

So therefore you had a context in your mind of that no one's gonna abandon me. No one's gonna try to hurt me. No one's gonna try to leave me. But when you are strict with her, it just reminds her of every person who said, "I'm fed up with you and I'm done." I have a question. Yeah, come on.

So what was her excuse when she was with her mother?

She lived in a house of turmoil always. Like for her to say right now that at 6 years old she saw her mother having sex.

Yeah, that's crazy.

It don't matter if you with your mom. The minute that you, just because you're there doesn't mean it's not pure dysfunction. And y'all keep saying, both of you, and I wrote it down, you said, "I feel like it's disrespect. She's disrespecting me." disrespecting us, it's disrespect. But I need you to remember this, it's not disrespect, it's pain you're seeing.

I do my best to encourage her a lot.

No, I heard it up here. When she started telling her story, I saw a whole different person flip. You started getting to like sensitive mode.

Yeah, 'cause I'm frustrated.

But the thing is when you're frustrated is the point what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

I'm not talking about when you, I'm not talking about when it clicks in. I'm talking about when you're frustrated at your wit's end, that's when I need you to remember what I'm teaching you right now. This is a child that's in pain. Because it's easy when she's doing good to be like, oh, I see your pain, I love you and I see it. But it's hard for us as adults to see her pain when she's done something that aggravates us.

Okay, so I understand what you're saying.

And I just wanna point out one more thing to you, her language. She kept saying, normal teenagers do this. This is normal teenagers. That's her way of saying, I'm doing this because no one taught me what it is to be a kid. And I'm doing what I think normal teenagers do.

Okay, okay.

She thinks she's being a normal teenager. That's why she's frustrated because she's like, this is what all teens do. She's like, I'm doing good grades, I'm still here, I'm not pregnant.

She's taking these things and she's like, I'm just being a regular kid.

We as adults, we understand what she's doing.

Yeah.

We understand how damaging this could be.

You know, she gotta understand the role that we play too. She have those good grades because of us.

Right. So this is where you now start positive reinforcement.

Okay.

So when I bring her back out right now, I want y'all to, I need y'all to do something for me.

Okay.

I need y'all to apologize to her for her language.

Okay.

Okay. Because I don't think there's been an adult in her life who's told her they're sorry.

You took it in your heart to bring her in.

Yes.

And you are an amazing human being for that. You as well.

Thank you.

There's not even blood for you and you over here doing stuff. Amazing human being.

Thank you.

So since you made the choice to take her in, You gotta make the decision to do the things that are gonna help her. So that's why I know y'all are not responsible for all the things she went through, but the healing has to start somewhere and it can start with you all. I see you getting emotional.

What's going on? Yes, I don't know. I just, I really care about her.

I know you do. Can I have this? Yes, of course you can. I know you do.

I really love my little sister.

I know you do.

It's so hard to see her go through this.

You know?

It's easy for us to think that kids who've gone through stuff need tough love, but it's actually the exact opposite. Love should never be tough. So y'all can commit to apologizing to her for the language?

Yeah.

So I'm gonna bring her back out.

Okay.

And that's gonna be the first step. Can y'all commit?

Yes.

All right, cool. Can we bring her back out?

I really apologize for the language that I used when I talked to you. I just really, you know, love you a lot. I didn't really think that until just now that the words language that I was using was possibly influencing you to feel less than or worse. And I apologize. And you know, moving forward, I wanna definitely adopt a different vocabulary moving forward. I love you so much. I really, really want you to know that.

I apologize too. I really do. I want you to know that we'll never give up on you. I'll never give up on you. We always gonna be here for you no matter what you wanna do with your life. "We gonna be here, we gonna stand behind you." That got you emotional quickly.

What was it about what they said that got you?

That's all I ever wanted to hear.

I always wanna be home.

Now you know that you got people here that love you and they just told you they're not gonna give up on you.

And so I know that's sometimes hard for you to believe. You're here right now, but you might get home and you might be like, I don't know if I can trust this. But you gotta find the courage in yourself to trust this.

She loves you. They both love you. They wanna be here for you and they're gonna do everything in their power to be here for you your entire life.

We all agree you got a bright future ahead of you.

You are a smart young woman. And I'm not going to shame you just because you've made choices to have sex. I'm not gonna shame you for that. What I'm gonna do is encourage you to say, understand that you can protect yourself, understand your power, understand your beauty, and understand that people love you, wanna be there for you. And now when it comes to your mother, there's something big I need you to hear, 'cause I know you want your mom, but your mom has an addiction. Until the addiction and your mom are separate, she's not gonna be able to give you what you need. And I'm sorry because you don't deserve that. But I think if you can understand that your mom is still in there. Yeah, take some tissue. Your mom is in there. She loves you. I know it feels like she doesn't because you feel like she abandoned you. She does love you. It's just the addiction has a hold of her. You understand? So I'm saying this to you so so you can understand, yeah, okay, my mom does love me.

She doesn't hate me, I'm not hated, but the addiction is clouding her.

And one day I pray that the addiction will be gone. And I promise you, she's gonna try to show up and give you the love. And hopefully as a young woman, having this language of understanding the difference between your mom and the addiction will maybe help you to say, you know what, let's try to talk it out. But understand that right now she's not gonna be able to give you what you need, but you have people who can. Can you receive that?

Yes, sir.

We love you and we believe in you, okay?

Thank you.

All right, you got your family. Hold up, hold up, where are you going? I know you wanna watch more Karamo, so click here to subscribe and click here to watch more so we can keep talking and growing, friends. I love you.