• The 4-year-old boy who stood up to a 6-foot-3-inch officer towering over him in a mask, helmet and full SWAT raid gear and proclaimed, "If you take my mommy to jail, I'm going to kick your a--."

• The dozens of neglected children with head lice and bad teeth sleeping on bare mattresses in dirty houses throughout the state.

• Sophia, a 5-year-old who quietly tells a social worker in a videotaped interview she doesn't live with Mommy and Daddy any more.

"They went to jail," says the little girl with dark ponytails.

"How come they went to jail?"

"They were being real bad people."

Officials seem daunted.

"It's so big. What do you do with it? It's like trying to stop a flood. What do you do?" said Rod Layton, a longtime Ogden-area law enforcement officer who is now director of the Children's Justice Center in Ogden.

Deseret Morning News reporters spent three months studying female meth addicts — "tweakers" as they call themselves — and the implications of their increased drug use on their families, society and the child welfare system.

Research included dozens of interviews with addicts and the police, prosecutors, counselors, child advocates, judges, social workers and doctors who see every day the meth problem many called an "epidemic."

In case after case, women of all races, backgrounds and economic circumstances told of trying meth, getting addicted immediately, losing their jobs, ignoring their children and then resorting to stealing, prostitution or other criminal and uncharacteristic behavior to keep using the drug.

They end up stealing from their families, their friends or stores.

Most have been reported to the state Division of Child and Family Services. Many have lost custody of their children. Many have been to jail. Most of them failed at treatment at least once. Most have returned to the drug after being clean.

Every woman interviewed expressed profound guilt over the way she treated her children and herself. All said, at the time, they couldn't help it.

"I was so powerless against methamphetamine. I gave up my children," said Cathy Anderson, 41, whose two daughters were placed in state custody. She is now incarcerated in the Utah State Prison on drug-related convictions.

"I walked away from my life, my husband, my children, everything. I gave up," she said. "I left my apartment and everything in it and became a meth addict."

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"Methamphetamine will take a woman down faster than anything else." — Katy Hilton, client services manager at the Volunteers of America Women's Detox Center, Murray.

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In a six-day series that starts today, the Deseret Morning News will explore this complex topic in more depth.