He is Homicidal and Suicidal...

He is threatening to kill his parents, his grandparents and himself.  He is threatening to use a gun, a chainsaw and a knife.  He is six years old.

The family court in Texas does not consider this an emergency.  I have to wonder what would be required for the court to consider this an emergency.  Does this child have to actually hurt someone first?  Then it will be too late.  The damage will be done, to himself and possibly someone else.  And if he hurts someone else how will he live with that for the rest of his life?  If he hurts himself how will his mother live with it? 

This child is saying this after visitations with his father.  When the mother picks her son up from visitations he is so full of rage and violence she cannot make the drive 5 hour drive home (his father lives in a different state and they meet halfway for the exchange).  She has to pull to the side of the highway and wait for the child to stop raging, hitting her in the back of the head with things he finds in the back seat and threatening to kill family members and himself.  She cannot drive down the highway like this, so they sit on the shoulder with the child raging for 30-45 minutes before she can continue driving.  But the state of Texas did not consider this an emergency and refused to intervene.

This child has been in therapy since he was 3 years old after his father shot a deer in his presence, showed him where the bullet entered and exited the deer, skinned the deer, gutted the deer, cut up the deer, cooked it for dinner and fed it to him.  The child states his father has killed "a lot" of animals in his presence since then and recently shot a horse which was sick and showed it to him at his last visit.  The child has been having nightmares and talking about blood and death since the age of 3.  But the state of Texas did not consider this to be behavior which was inappropriate enough for them to intervene. 

The child jumps a mile at the sound of any loud noise.  He is constantly scanning the environment for danger.  He has nightmares and serious difficulty sleeping.  He often sees his father outside his bedroom window covered in blood and holding a knife .  He is constantly fearful and absolutely panics if he makes even the simplest of mistakes out of fear of being punished.  The child now rages inconsolably for up to 3 hours at a time several days a week.  He has begun putting a belt around his neck at home and states that he wants to die.  He states that he is a "bad kid" and that he wishes he were dead so his mother could have a "good son".  He wants God to kill him so he can die and go to 'that burning place' because he is a bad kid and it will make God happy.  The child believes he is going to be taken to "jail" for being a bad kid.  Someone is telling him this during his visitations with his father.  He also reports that his father beats him with a belt, not hard enough to leave marks, but hard enough and frequent enough to terrorize him.  When told that the child's psychologist had recommended that the spankings stop, the father stated that he would not stop because he believes that "fear and fear of physical pain" will make the boy act right. 

This child is acting out at preschool.  He is unable to control his emotions and is constantly afraid that others are laughing at him or making fun of him.  He often acts out the violence he has apparently experienced at home with other students at school.  Because he has so much trouble controlling his emotions he is becoming terrified of social situations or any situation that requires interacting with other kids or adults.  In the past 3 years he has become increasing fearful of new situations and new people and is terrified to even attend fun events, like parties. 

The school system has failed this child as well.  His teachers criticize his behavior, in front of him and the other students, and label him a problem child.  They are constantly critical and punitive and put a lot of pressure on the mother to medicate him into "compliance".  One even made him wear diapers in front of the whole class for "acting like a baby".   This only served to further traumatize him and humiliate him in front of his peers. 

The mental health system has been no help either.  For the past three years this child has been diagnosed with ADHD for years and placed on behavior modification schedules and stimulalnt medications.  No one diagnosed it as trauma or treated the trauma despite the mother telling them about these incidents.  Instead of working on the trauma, they focus on his out of control behavior and medicate his with stimulants!  If there is anything someone who is traumatized does not need it is a stimulant, especially a child.  Because of his intense rages and his inability to control his emotions have caused the mental health professionals to now label him "Bipolar".  They wish to medicate him with antipsychotics (aka "mood stabilizers"), but the mother is refusing this diagnosis and fighting to have her son's trauma treated rather than having him labeled and medicated into oblivion. 

When her son says he wants to kill himself and others, his mother takes him to the psychiatric hospital.  Whenstaff there question him about how he feels at that moment, the child is smart enough to deny wanting to kill himself or anyone else to avoid being hospitalized.  So they send the mother home with him, untreated, where he resumes raging and being violent.  He has now started to self-mutilate, clawing at his skin and tearing holes in it when distressed.

The mother was finally referred to a day treatment program.  The child told the staff during the evaluation that he wanted to shoot his dad.  (It should also be noted that the father keeps loaded weapons in the house and refuses to lock them up or put them in a gun cabinet.)  After 3 days of treatment and starting to address the issues with his father which he has tried to keep bottled up for the past 3 years, the child rages so out of control he has to be injected with thorazine and transferred to a 24 hour in-patient facility for the next week.

Texas Child Protective Services refused to help because the father lives in another state. CPS of the other state refused to help because there are no bruises or broken bones on the child (no evidence of abuse). The medical experts refuse to state that this child needs to remain with his mother and receive treatment without further visits with the father until therapy can be completed to the point of finding out what is happening to this child. And the legal experts won't declare this an emergency, take jurisdiction, and protect the interest and safety of the mental/emotional health of the child.

The mother sought help from psychological experts and the legal system to stop the visitations until it could be determined what was happening on visitations to cause the child to behave this way.  She asked the state of Texas to take jurisdiction of the situation and make a ruling to protect the child.  The state of Texas refused to intervene.  The judge said he was not clear that this was an emergency.  His father invoked his parental right to have his visitations and expressed no concern about his son's behavior, distress or psychological treatment.  The psychological "expert" was more interested in being fair to both parents in order to maintain his reputation than he was in protecting the child.  Visitations are scheduled to continue.

The child is due to return to his father for a 10 day visitation in late August - one week before he starts school. 

It has been said that, "Americans are more interested in waging war than in protecting our children." 

What do you think?

Comments

[anon]

I think the father belongs in prison for the crime of torture.

[Kellen]

I can't disagree with you there. He at least needs to have his visitation eliminated.

[Mike]

This link has just been sent to me. It is uncertain to me how much of this is being fabricated about this father and what is fact. Seeing an animal killed at such a young age could be traumatic but I’ll put my money saying this child’s trauma occurred much earlier than that. I would guess if it wasn’t in-utero it occurred preverbal. That is common in seeing this type of behavior at such a young age.

Additionally the resulting rages might have little to do with the father. This child could act like an angel for the entire visit with his father. Then when mom picks him up there is a huge release of pent up emotion. Lots of spouses see this one. Their partner has a bad day at work and brings it home…. Many of these younger school aged children can do fairly well in school but will rage for hours at home.

All I’m truly saying is if this child has attachment issues or disorder his behavior can’t be judged or rationalized in a “normal” manner. These issues and disorders even make normal married couples look crazy because of the manipulation and triangulation skills of even the youngest affected children.

Sadly there are only small pockets of parents and/or professionals working with this sect of children. If you wish to contact me privately I will see if we can get this family where they need to go.

Sincerely,

Michael Groomer

Advocates for Children of Trauma
7924 Eastland Ave.
Fort Worth, Texas 76135
Phone: 817-219-5459
Fax: 817-237-6505
E-mail: ACT_Founder@sbcglobal.net
Website: www.hopeforhealingtrauma.com

Advocates for Children of Trauma is a 501 (C) (3) charitable organization

[anon]

"These issues and disorders even make normal married couples look crazy because of the manipulation and triangulation skills of even the youngest affected children."

It is very sad that even therapists organize against the traumatized. There is truly no place for us. We need enlightened witnesses who are no longer unconsciously beholden to their own parents.

[disgusted]

The child is living in chaos, being shuffled around between parents. THe dad sounds like a creep, but the mother is probably not too balanced either if she was married to a creep. They ship the child off to the mental health professionals for help. But, the child goes right back into a chaotic environment. What good is therapy when the child is living in toxic environment? Sadly, I guess they'll do what they always do in Texas load the child up on a crapload of antipsychotics and send him back to the environment that caused the problems to begin with. I guess CPS doesn't care about emotional abuse?

[Kellen]

Hi Mike,

Actually, none of this has been fabricated. The child involved is a family member. The child has not gotten safe enough in his therapeutic setting to voice hostility directly toward his father and more information is coming out. Thank you so much for your support. I'll the mother know.

[Kellen]

Anon,

You wrote, "It is very sad that even therapists organize against the traumatized. There is truly no place for us. We need enlightened witnesses who are no longer unconsciously beholden to their own parents."

I couldn't agree more. A colleague once said that children should have rights and parents should have privileges. I couldn't agree more.

[Kellen]

Disgusted,

Texas CPS won't intervene because the abuse is happening in Arkansas. The mother is participating fully in counseling with the child and getting her own counseling, but the environment is certainly chaotic which does not help. It has been a constant fight to avoid having this child labelled as "ADHD" or "Bipolar Disorder" and pumped full of some very dangerous medications. You certainly got that right. You are also right that providing therapy while returning the child to the environment which is causing the problem is pointless. The abuse has to stop before healing can begin to be truly effective.

From having spoken to CPS in two different states, I'm afraid the answer is "No", they do not care about emotional abuse. If you don't leave a mark, they will not investigate. And I think that is sad. In my humble opinion, mental and emotional abuse can often be much more debilitating than physical abuse because it gets in your head and distorts the way you experience every single thing. Unfortunately, CPS does not agree.

Thank you for your concern and your feedback.

[anon]

I have an idea, Kellen. Perhaps the mother can get a judge in Arkansas to get rid of the father's visitation, not on the grounds of child abuse, but on the grounds that contact with the father is interfering with needed medical treatment that is in the best interest of the child. The best interest of the child is the standard that is used to make decisions that effect children. Since CPS does not consider what the father is doing to be child abuse, maybe you can get a therapist to simply say that visitation with the father is preventing the child from receiving the benfit of desperately needed treatment and that it is in the boy's best interest to have no contact with his father because to continue the visitation prevents effective treatment. This can be said without using the words 'child abuse'. It might even score points in shock value to avoid the phrase anyway and to graphically DESCRIBE the problem instead of naming it. Any judge judge worth his salt will not NEED anyone else to tell him it is abuse if it can be done this way. Also, the whole thing might look more impressive if it lands in front of a judge as an emergency injunction. Can the mother get a lawyer in Arkansas to attempt to file such a thing on the boy's behalf? Maybe someone who is still slightly green and looking to make a name for him/herself? The mother might get off cheap that way, too. Sending out some skillfully worded press releases might not be a bad idea, either (depending - seek professional legal advice - I am not a lawyer). I like to hope that the general public views the torture of children in an unfavorable light and this is why I say publicity might encourage a decision that truly is in the child's best interest. Good luck, Kellen. Please let us know how the poor young man fares. I will keep him in my thoughts.

[anon]

http://www.childtrauma.org/aboutCTA/CT_Academy.asp
ChildTrauma@ChildTraumaAcademy.org
1-866-943-9779
Maybe the boy can be assessed here and someone will have the courage to call a spade a spade.

I hope you don't mind, Kellen, but I sent this link to a couple of blog friends who are lawyers. One is also an advocate for abused and neglected children. Maybe one of them will have a suggestion to guide the mother to some legal help for her boy. If I think of anything else, I will come back and leave it in comments. I hope someone can do something. We cannot let atrocities such as these continue against our children. If people would have gained the courage to stand up against things like this many years ago, I would be sleeping right now. Maybe, if we refuse to be quiet, some future generation will sleep easier.