What seems a bit unlikely is that these photos are actually _representative_ of the results of animal hoarding. I do think it's likely that they're a bit on the extreme end. Not that I haven't seen things that approach (say about 10% as bad) among friends....

Unless their definition of hoarding is actually extreme.

They're really bad. I can't say I've seen worse. But I question the use of the term "representative". Putting on my statistical hat -- sample size? Range? It's almost as bad as the question of how you'd actually design a sample good enough to capture most of the variation in the human genome....

All that said, the pics are gutwrenching in part because I've seen things that are in that direction. And there's a parallel here to another thread in which people are talking about those who might choose to be homeless, or live very close to the edge of that. I won't go into my current living situation, except to say that the kindness of others sometimes goes much farther than I might think.

Cheers,
Tom

Posted October 8, 2003 12:47 AM by Tom Whitmore

Tom, I'm afraid they're fairly typical of end-state animal hoarding sites. That's why some of the houses have to be bulldozed or burned afterwards: there's no cleaning them up. Go read my original post on hoarding and follow the links.

Posted October 8, 2003 12:59 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I did -- that's why I'm just questioning. Agreed that these are end-state conditions -- I'm wondering what happens in the middle, where interventions can be more useful. Representative of the end-state I'm willing to believe -- representative of the problem, that's harder for me to swallow. Because the problem is a lot larger than the end state. Odd parallel, throw it out if it doesn't work for you -- living with HIV is very different from having AIDS. But they're aspects of the same problem (assuming HIV is the cause, etc. -- the metaphor is likely to work whether that's true or not, just have different resonances, and I do think it's pretty likely to be true).

Can you tell I'm in a down mood tonight?

Cheers,
Tom

Posted October 8, 2003 1:05 AM by Tom Whitmore

Yes. Don't follow all those links tonight.

Posted October 8, 2003 1:15 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Click on MORE at the bottom of the Particles list and read cheerful-looking Particles links instead.

Posted October 8, 2003 1:18 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Oh my gosh, my heart goes out to his poor boy. The conditions described are horrible! When I was growing up, someone was found to be a hoarder and the local press went crazy. I remember seeing the house and reading the papers. It was one of the saddest and most disturbing things I had ever seen. What kind of help can these people get?

Posted October 8, 2003 1:52 AM by Kim Stagg

My heart goes out to his mother. Being held responsible for his death, with little or no substantive connection, it's horrible. It's also seemed that the jury was looking to blame someone, and she happened to be the one who was brought to them.

Posted October 8, 2003 2:21 AM by mattH

My mum's a pack rat (no, not nearly an end-state hoarder: but I recognise the pattern...) and I was bullied in school. I didn't mind living in a cluttered, messy house - but there were times when I'd have pled sick to stay out of school. (Didn't work.)

Posted October 8, 2003 3:24 AM by Yonmei

It makes me so angry that they are blaming his mother. She was working two jobs to support her family; no mother should have to go through that. How could she possibly have the time or energy to do what needed to be done? Someone should have stepped in to help the mother, and the son.

I was teased in junior high (and a little bit in high school), and what amazed and baffled me is that it would sometimes occur literally right under the teachers' noses and they did NOTHING to stop it. They didn't say a word. I felt like I was living under Plexiglas. If they could see it, why didn't they say anything about it?

Once in elementary school I was being picked on by some kids at lunch and went to an aide for help. She admonished me not to "tattle."

I have never understood the extreme reluctance adults have for intervening in the lives of children. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Posted October 8, 2003 6:43 AM by spacewaitress

mattH, the mother didn't "happen" to be the one who was brought to the jury to be blamed. She was the one who was weak enough to be attacked--the school wasn't, and apparently neither were the bullies or their parents.

I think I see Tom's point--there can be easy slippage in the news from the ordinary problem to the extreme cases.

Posted October 8, 2003 7:08 AM by Nancy Lebovitz

Yonmei, I have some dear friends who keep a very messy house, but are raising extraordinary kids in it. These friends commonly work long hours. They only have so much time left over. If the amount of loving, devoted effort they put into their children were instead applied to their house, it would probably be in pretty good shape -- and no one would say a word to them about their priorities.

Sometimes I wonder how much our society actually likes kids.

Posted October 8, 2003 7:21 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Sometimes I wonder how much our society actually likes kids.

That answer, sadly, is "not very damn much."

Which is why I get pissed every time some pundit starts moaning about all the things we should do "for our children" - the Jesus Castillo debacle being only one recent case in point.

Adult comics? Omigod, think of the children! But if some poor misfit's being bullied quite literally to death - hey, life's tough, right? Kids just hafta learn to cope.

What a fucked-up world.

Posted October 8, 2003 10:19 AM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

"mattH, the mother didn't "happen" to be the one who was brought to the jury to be blamed. She was the one who was weak enough to be attacked--the school wasn't, and apparently neither were the bullies or their parents."

Posted by: Nancy Lebovitz on October 8, 2003 07:08 AM

Nancy, you've been putting out perceptive posts for many years now (I remember your name from rec.arts.sf.written), but this might be in your top 10. Elegant and cutting to the heart - the bullying just moved up one level.

Posted October 8, 2003 10:30 AM by Barry

I think we can all see such parallels in our own lives. I was that 63 pound 12 year old. A friend's uncle was a hoarder of extreme measures - once, he had to be hospitalized, and when they went into his house, they found whole rooms packed floor to ceiling with newspapers and garbage he and his wife picked up on the side of the road.

As for the bullying, I experienced that, too. At my school, because I was one of the "hoods", the administration actually encouraged the jocks to bully us so as to provoke us into suspendable or expellable actions. It would have been very lonely and difficult without kindred spirits.

Posted October 8, 2003 10:59 AM by Jeff Crook

You know the mother had to have been getting minimal pay and benefits from Wal-mart. Working long hours at 2 jobs can have a lot to do with lack of attention to housekeeping.
but you can't blame someone for someone else's suicide unless they actively allowed or abetted the situation---e.g., Dr. kevorkian, or, say, not calling an ambulance for several hours when you know someone took an overdose of pills. the mother obviously has her problems, but she's a scapegoat. If they're going to lock her up for havinng a sink full of dirty dishes...(better not give Mayor Bloomberg any ideas).
And in my experience, bullyinng generally goes on in schools that are negligent about it or encourage it. To a certain extent, it's good to let kids fight their own battles; but part of the responsibility of a school administrator is to deal with stuations that have gone beyond the "boys will be boys" level. You can be sure that at least some of the teachers were quite aware of the general situation and did nothing about it. if anyone deserves to go to jail, it's the principal...

Posted October 8, 2003 12:46 PM by Robert L

I really disagree. Her neglect contributed to his isolation. If he was soiling himself at school, don't you think she could have noticed?

And her house went way beyond "a sinkful of dirty dishes."

Not that I exonerate the school, not by a long shot. And what about all the people who could have called Child Protective Services or the equivalent? No one knew about the conditions he was living in?

It's all very well to say "she was working two jobs to support him." Sorry, if she couldn't care for him any better than that, she had a moral responsibility to get help -- for him and/or for herself, up to and including surrendering him to the foster care system if need be. (No, I don't think that's a great place either; just better than being dead.)

I agree, in part, with Nancy's post above. She was arrested because she was targetable, not because she was the only one to blame. BUT she cannot be considered blameless: parents have the PRIMARY responsibility to see to the health and safety of their kids. The unjust thing was not her arrest, but the LACK of arrests in other areas.

Posted October 8, 2003 5:26 PM by Xopher

I went to a meeting with teachers and counselor at my son's school last week. The P.E. teacher described my son's experience in P.E. as "daily mental rape" and recommended that they put him in another class. What amazed and outraged me was that the "solution" was for me to get a note from his psychiatrist excusing him from P.E., as if the fact that he was not very coordinated and was being subject to "daily mental rape" because of it was his fault, or maybe mine for not teaching him how to run properly or something. We asked whether he could do an "independent study" contract for P.E., and the counselor said, rather snottily, "We only do that for the four olympic-track athletes that we have at the school." Fucking-hell, like my son isn't worthy of the same deal that the "olympic-track" athletes get. I thought moving to a neighborhood with the alleged good schools would be the right thing, but they turn out to be run by pompous jackasses. Grr, it makes my blood boil.

Posted October 8, 2003 5:33 PM by Someone

It's stories like this that make me eternally grateful to have my job.

I work for Bear Valley Healthy Start, a rural cooperative funded by the local school district, California's Healthy Start and First 5 programs (via First 5 San Bernardino) and the San Bernardino County's Promoting Safe and Stable Families program. We provide pre-schoolers and elementary school kids with Family Advisors who provide counseling, socialization groups and sometimes just someone to talk to.

We work very closely with our in-school health aides, teachers and parents as well as other resources in the community, helping people deal with problems from divorce or death in the family to domestic abuse to homelessness to not having a warm jacket or a pair of shoes that fit.

One of our most beautiful success stories was an 8 year old boy who couldn't control his bowels in class. He was mocked and shunned by other students and disliked by teachers who thought he was just "acting out for attention." Word got to the school nurse who checked his medical file and found out he had spinal bifida -- he literally could NOT control his bodily functions.

We contacted his parents, helped them get low-cost medical insurance through a state program, and kept checking to make sure they followed up with doctor appointments. We set up routines with the health aide to help him work on control. On the social side, we invited the boy to join one our of lunch groups, where a half dozen kids of about the same age would have lunch with a Family Advisor.

Within six months, his "accidents" had dropped to nearly none. Within a year, he was a normal kid, playing on the playground with his new friends.

We hope to find out within the next few weeks whether or not we'll be awarded a grant to allow us to extend our services to the middle school and high school.

Just wanted to bring in a small ray of hope amidst the horror and dispair.

Posted October 8, 2003 5:53 PM by Rachel Heslin

There's plenty of blame to go around, if we want to lay any at all, but I'm on the compassion and horror side of the ledger myself.

I feel bad for the kid, and his mother, and the overburdened teachers, and everybody who tried to help but didn't know how or didn't succeed.

Rachel, (or anyone else) what advice do you have for "ordinary folks" who would like to be part of the solution?

Posted October 8, 2003 6:28 PM by Debbie Notkin

Xopher, I agree that the house went way beyond "a sinkful of dirty dishes". But then... so does the mess in my house, some days. (No, not as bad as described. But not good.) When I'm depressed and working long hours (so that when I get home I have neither the physical nor the mental energy to do anything but sit down and play on the Internet or watch TV or re-read a thrice-read novel) I don't tend to pick up stuff. I don't tend to pay attention to much outside the basics. And fortunately for me, my only dependents are two cats.

Daniel's mother needed help almost as much as he did. Neither of them got it.

Sorry, if she couldn't care for him any better than that, she had a moral responsibility to get help -- for him and/or for herself

Where was she supposed to get help? A serious question. What it seems (from a way distance away) she needed was to be able to quit working two jobs with long hours just to get by, counselling to deal with (what looks like to me) serious depression, someone to help her clear up her home, and support in fighting the school to make them do something to protect her son from the bullies. (That's just my guesslist: feel free to alter or add anything to it.) Now tell me (I'm not American) where should she have gone to get (a) more money (or at least, the same money) with less hours (b) free counselling (c) free home help (d) moral support to help fight the school?

up to and including surrendering him to the foster care system if need be. (No, I don't think that's a great place either; just better than being dead.)

What makes you think surrendering hin to the foster care service would have prevented him from committing suicide? Seriously. He was being bullied at school to the extent that he felt unable to do anything but die. Why would removing him from his home make him want to live?

BUT she cannot be considered blameless: parents have the PRIMARY responsibility to see to the health and safety of their kids.

Primary responsibility falls on parents. Father in jail, mother unable to cope and not getting help. Where primary responsibility fails, secondary responsibility is to blame when it also fails. Yes?

The unjust thing was not her arrest, but the LACK of arrests in other areas.

Arresting her was completely futile. Just or unjust, not really to the point: just futile. Sending a mother to jail because her only son has committed suicide because he was being bullied at school is a new record - it stands above all other jail sentences I have ever heard of as utterly, completely pointless. (My standard "zero point" of pointless sentencing is sentencing people to jail because they have not paid their TV licence. This is somewhere around minus 5, I think. Maybe minus 6.)

Posted October 8, 2003 6:59 PM by Yonmei

Xopher wrote: Not that I exonerate the school, not by a long shot. And what about all the people who could have called Child Protective Services or the equivalent? No one knew about the conditions he was living in?

Not to excuse her behavior, but to provide clarification: Child Protective Services varies from state to state, but as I know it the Child Protective Services people can only start work on cases when they know there's something up already--a neighbor or friend tips them off.

If the mother was working a full and part-time job, she probably didn't have many friends over. If the kid was being bullied every day at school, he probably didn't have any friends to invite home. If the outside of the house was kept clean, and it's anything like the suburb I live in, the only thing that would ever have stopped daily at the house would be the mail delivery truck, 15 feet away from the living room. No one would have noticed.

It is very probable that no one could have known.
The teachers, maybe, would have thought it odd that he had ill-fitting clothes that smelled. But they wouldn't have done anything about it. Ill-fitting clothes and faint odors don't concern teachers if someone could have bullied the boy in front of them and it didn't make them bat an eye. Most of the time they would probably have forgotten his existance as one of those quiet children who cling to the wall.

Posted October 8, 2003 7:36 PM by Cassandra

The mother was working two jobs to keep her kids indoors. After seeing what the system was doing for her child, perhaps that's all she thought she could do.

A single mother working 60+ hours a week would have to be a hero to find a way to advocate for a child who the system was complicit in abusing. This mother wasn't that much of a hero. Probably she was also depressed and feeling helpless.

I find it very, very odd that a child who missed literally months of school because of bullying, whose teachers made him clean it up when someone spit on him, and who told the truant officer why he didn't feel able to go to school, died because of bad housekeeping.

Posted October 8, 2003 8:03 PM by julia

Until her son's suicide, she was working at his school.

"She lost a well-paying job with benefits as a paraprofessional at Washington Middle School in Meriden, the school Daniel attended."

http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/hc-scruggs1008.artoct08,1,1449947.story?coll=hc-headlines-local

Posted October 8, 2003 8:30 PM by Jon H

I find it interesting that the mother was charged only after she sued the school system for allowing the child's death.

Posted October 8, 2003 8:33 PM by Arthur D. Hlavaty

"She lost a well-paying job with benefits as a paraprofessional at Washington Middle School in Meriden, the school Daniel attended."

Oh, terrific. So if she had advocated for her son she could have lost her job.

Hey, good work, jury.

Posted October 8, 2003 8:56 PM by julia

Sometimes I wonder how much our society actually likes kids.

Sometimes I wonder how much it actually likes mothers.

Posted October 9, 2003 12:02 AM by pericat

It tells me something, TNH, that the first words you wrote were The kid was twelve. And for all the comments on bullying and teasing, has anyone else here come close to suiciding because of it? I have only noticed one mention of personal bullying... and not near the problems I had. Have. I am not saying it still happens in my life, merely that that teasing--such a small word for such a heinous act--reverberates in my life today.

I was eleven, had been teased for various reasons--mainly because I would react and cry--since kindergarten. Sixth grade, and a classic sign of "crying for attenting"--my grades dropped. I wasn't turning math homework, teacher knew I knew the stuff as I aced the quizzes, and my parents watched me do the homework. It simply wasn't going from my home to my school. No one noticed. And any time I asked the school to help me in any capacity I was told to simply ignore the teasing. And if this seems a little dry to anyone reading this, sorry, I tend to do that when trying to refrain from extensive cursing.

I was fighting with my mother at home, her work was causing her stress, and as eldest kid, I was a very viable target. And there was problems in the family--a first cousin got pregnant, and Mom did not find out from the cousin's mom (her middle sister), but from the youngest sister. Stress meet target. That boy hung himself. And all I can think is, he's brave. Hanging, unless you're heavy enough to snap your own neck--at 63 pounds he wasn't--you suffocate to death. I was going to use my Dad's handgun that I had found, plus the bullets that he kept, correctly, in a separate place. When you're hurting like Daniel and I were, you don't want anymore pain, but you want it to end.

I never did shoot myself, I'm not exactly sure why. We were studying the Holocaust in Sunday School that year (I'm Jewish), maybe the suffering I was reading sunk in, along with the will to survive. I promised myself I would review my life at my 13th birthday, and decide again whether I wanted to go on. If yes, decide again at 16. Then 18. I still have my 21st birthday to get through in a little more than six months.

They never will punish those kids. I know from experience. The only punishment any of the kids I was teased by got was from my own tears and words and hurt. I wrote a poem in high school, some ten quatrains long that I got permission to read to my English class, which wouldn't you know, held some of earliest teasers. It was me, in that narrative poem I read to them, about the pain, and I looked in their eyes as I read it. And I made sure they understood it was me and that the bullies were them. And by that time they were old enough to understand the shit they put me through. See, to me, the greatest punishment would be for those kids to understand exactly the extent of their crime against Daniel. As young as they are, it isn't going to happen now. And without Daniel, it may never happen. I barely got through to some of the boys who teased me; few people who haven't undergone this understand to what depths it hurts you.

Worst thing of mine and Daniel's situation is no one takes notice until it is too late. Daniel's dead. Me, my own parents didn't realize how bad it had gotten until I screamed it in a fight two years later. People, don't keep silent, and think that the kids are handling it fine; when I was with my folks, I was a normal kid, but I hurt for six years before making my stance, if only my mind, that they weren't going to hurt me anymore.

If I sound bitter, I'm sorry. If I sound fanatical on the subject, I have reason to be.

Posted October 9, 2003 12:42 AM by S. Ann Ran

S. Ann: No, I never came close to suicide; and looking back, each time as the situation escalated, it finally got bad enough to trigger adult radar. Understand, it was pretty bad from my POV for quite some time before that: but no adult at my school, or in a couple of other situations, let it slide once it had visibly gone beyond "just teasing".

Two girls got hauled up in front of the headteacher because they were punching me in the classroom: if they'd stuck to whispering names, nothing would have happened (I speak from experience). Hitting and damage to property seems to be the point at which adults at my school at the time I went there realise "just teasing" is actually bullying: but then, I was a girl - and I suspect that a teacher might register a boy hitting another boy as "fighting" rather than "bullying" if they are both roughly the same size.

Officially, British schools are much tougher on bullying now than they used to be. All kinds of name-calling (racist, sexist, homophobic, sectarian) are now recognised as a form of bullying that equally needs to be stopped as much as outright violence. In fact, while racism is recognised as important, and sectarianism runs a close second (at least in Scotland), sexism and homophobia are still regarded as perfectly normal; a boy being called a poof or a girl being called a dyke will not arouse the same kind of teacherly wrath as racist or sectarian abuse - and sexist bullying is still pretty much completely invisible.

Posted October 9, 2003 2:01 AM by Yonmei

"I was teased in junior high (and a little bit in high school), and what amazed and baffled me is that it would sometimes occur literally right under the teachers' noses and they did NOTHING to stop it. They didn't say a word. I felt like I was living under Plexiglas. If they could see it, why didn't they say anything about it?"

Because they supported it, of course. Silent participants. It is amazing how many people think that this is healthy. And it doesn't stop in high school; the way some professional schools treat their students is similar. Or even school at all--look at how Schwarzennegger has treated people under his authority.

Ever hated someone in the "caring" professions? I have. Somewhere, there's a really bad psychologist and wannabe guru who owes me about half my adult life back.

Posted October 9, 2003 3:57 AM by Randolph Fritz

Nancy, I'm sorry that I and my posting style are not well known here. I understand the less-than-random targeting of Judith Scruggs to the exclusion of the other possible, and more deserving, targets. Sorry I didn't indicate as much. Even if it hadn't garnered national media attention she would have been treated exactly the same. A big part of my frustration is that she was punished in large part for failing to fufill sterotypical "maternal" responsibilities, and the implication that she must not have been much of a parent when it mattered most.

Posted October 9, 2003 5:00 AM by mattH

What makes you think surrendering him to the foster care service would have prevented him from committing suicide? Seriously. He was being bullied at school to the extent that he felt unable to do anything but die. Why would removing him from his home make him want to live?

Perhaps experienced foster parents might have noticed he was soiling himself at school each day. Likely they would not have been able to get away with squalid living conditions, either (though there are always horror stories). Removing him from his home would not have made him want to live -- it just might have taken away some of the reasons he wanted to die.

Where primary responsibility fails, secondary responsibility is to blame when it also fails. Yes?

Yes. That's what I meant by "I'm not exonerating the school, not by a long shot."

Posted October 9, 2003 2:28 PM by Xopher

Perhaps experienced foster parents might have noticed he was soiling himself at school each day.

I'd place that onus on experienced, or even rank amateur, teachers-- they're at the school.

His mother did notice he was soiling himself regularly, though. Perhaps she could have done more than (a) nag him to shower and (b) despair. What I don't understand is how her failure to rise to this challenge is a criminal act, let alone one for which she is solely responsible.

Posted October 9, 2003 3:30 PM by pericat

Perhaps experienced foster parents might have noticed he was soiling himself at school each day.

And might not. Or might not have attributed the correct reason to it.

I will grant you that had J. Daniel Scruggs lucked into exactly the right foster parents, they might have figured out what was going on at school - assuming that they're probably working shorter hours than Judith Scruggs was - in time to act and thus save Daniel's life. But it's evident that was needed was for someone to pay attention to the terrible things that were being done to Daniel at school. He didn't need to be removed from his mother - however overworked - and his home - however squalid - for that to happen.

What I don't understand is how her failure to rise to this challenge is a criminal act, let alone one for which she is solely responsible.

Because that makes everyone else involved feel better.

Posted October 9, 2003 4:06 PM by Yonmei

Child neglect is a criminal offense. Letting them be dirty is only slightly less serious than letting them go hungry. If she had sole custody (and Dad was in prison, so she probably did), she has the sole parental responsibility.

That said, my comments about not exonerating the school still apply. I still think she was singled out because the other targets were too hard to prosecute. I'm starting to feel that people are not hearing me say that; I've said it several times now.

Posted October 9, 2003 4:10 PM by Xopher

I think his mother knew he was in trouble. I think there was little or nothing she could do.

First, she was working two jobs. That doesn't leave a lot of time or energy to spare.

Second, there's the matter of her being an employee at the same school her son attended. She was a teacher's aide. They're low on the totem pole, ill-paid and unprotected. Nevertheless, that was her full-time job. Losing it wouldn't just have been a catastrophic loss of income. Any benefits she had would have depended on her keeping it. It could have gone further than that. For all I know, she could have financed her mortgage through the teachers' credit union. But whatever her precise circumstances, it remains that she had far less power to protest on behalf of her son than parents usually have. And as Arthur Hlavaty has pointed out, she was charged only after she sued the school.

Daniel Scruggs knew more about his reasons than anyone else. There's a lot we can infer about his opinions. He was doing everything in his power to stay at home instead of going to school. I have yet to hear of him telling a counselor that he couldn't bear the thought of staying with his mother. Going back to his old school was what bothered him. He didn't deliberately piss himself -- an enormous humiliation for a kid that age -- to keep from having to go home.

If Daniel's mother knew he kept knives in his hideout, she also knew why he kept them, which is more understanding than his school ever managed. And if those knives were such a big signal of suicidal intentions, why didn't Daniel use them when he killed himself? Because he didn't. He hanged himself.

I think his school knew he was in trouble, and didn't care, and didn't act, because they thought he and his mother were powerless. This matters in the public school system whether you have good administrators or bad. Public schools don't have the resources to contest legal actions that don't threaten the integrity of the school system itself. Combative or litigious parents get their way oftener than they should. Some districts or administrators deal justly where they can, and give in where they can't help it. Others more cynically base their decisions on who can and can't fight back.

I think the school district in question is in the latter category. I think they didn't foresee a twelve-year-old killing himself; or, if they did, they didn't anticipate how much clear evidence he'd leave behind of his reasons for doing so.

Daniel repeatedly asked for help. He knew you were supposed to be able to do that, because his mother worked in the system. And given his behavioral symptoms and attendance record, the school would have known he was in trouble whether he said so or not. If they honestly thought his problems were his mother's fault, why didn't they intervene? Furthermore, why did they continue to employ her? It couldn't have been more obvious that one or more member of that family needed help.

These criminal charges are not the usual thing in garbage-house cases. I don't have access to legal databases, but in all my reading on the subject, most of the legal wrangling referred to has been about stuff like cleanup costs or loss of custody. Maybe those bits just didn't make it into the printed version. But there've been garbage house cases where the condition of the household has materially contributed to the death or injury of a dependent living there. I think there'd have been some mention of criminal prosecutions for that; and if there were, I think I would have noticed it.

I don't know whether Connecticut's schools are locally financed. If they are, a liability judgement against the school district would have put a big dent in Meriden's budget.

Daniel's treatment at school had been so appalling that only a few months after his death, the state had passed strict new laws intended to make sure it never happened again. Nevertheless, the prosecution in Judith Scruggs' trial kept the case narrowly focused on her housekeeping. "Odd" is the least I can call that.

Posted October 9, 2003 4:26 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Nice synchronicity:

An MSNBC story about the discovery of part of the brain that becomes active when a person recieves a social snub . . . and speculation that this stimulation is as unpleasant as actual physical pain:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/978061.asp?0dm=C11MT

Posted October 9, 2003 4:39 PM by Stefan Jones

Christopher, I know she was responsible. But usually this kind of thing has to get really, really bad -- and the parent or guardian has to reject attempts to help -- before anyone thinks of bringing criminal charges.

As that last quote said in my initial post, it's fairly common for the plight of human dependents living with animal hoarders to be brought to the attention of the authorities by the animal rescue organizations.

You could say, justly, that we understand violent physical abuse better than we understand neglect. That's a problem. Neglect is by far the commonest form of child abuse. But I don't think that's what this is about. The main thing the school's neglect of Daniel when he was alive has in common with the criminal prosecution of his mother after his death is that both are the cheap and easy options.

Posted October 9, 2003 4:47 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Well, Teresa, I think the fact that he frequently slept in the his closet with his knives says something about how comfortable he felt at home. Most people don't sleep in closets with weapons. They sleep in beds. Did he bring his knives to school? I think where he kept his weapons is rather important.

Also, he was almost certainly was bullied in part because he smelled. NO I don't think bullying is right, but one way to stop it is remove whatever it is you're bullied for. Smelling funny is fatal in teen groups. The responsibility for clean clothes and body lies with the parent. Also, was he poorly socialized?

And, I know someone whose parents were quasi-animal collectors. When a home is too full of dirty dishes to get to the stove (as my freind's home was), then food is not cooked. If food is not cooked, then food is not eaten. The boy was listed as being exceptionally small. Malnutrition maybe? Nutritional deficiences can cause mood problems. Could he have made friends and invited them into the home when it was like that? Friends are another bully deterrent.

I am not saying it's all the mom's fault. I think the school is at fault, oh yeah. Tons of fault to go around.

But parents bear primary responsibility for their children's needs, in my book. If she was part of the school system, she knew she could contact child protective services herself, and hand over her child. If I was in her shoes, I would have. Clean clothes and meals, and supervision are all things she seems to have been unable to provide.

Yes, I feel sorry for lots of working single mothers with few resources and a hard road. But my mother, who worked for very little money for years, would never have let me soil myself without doing SOMETHING besides nag me to take a shower.

I think it's very sad.

-Elizabeth

Posted October 9, 2003 5:00 PM by Elizabeth

Teresa, you say, "These criminal charges are not the usual thing in garbage-house cases. I don't have access to legal databases, but in all my reading on the subject, most of the legal wrangling referred to has been about stuff like cleanup costs or loss of custody."

That's different.

That's about property values--of course the legal system responded to that--or billable hours for divorce attorneys. This is the stuff that lawyers' dreams are made of.

But who was going to make a buck saving this kid?

For the second time this week, I'll quote Lemuel Pratt (a clear sign I give a damn, or maybe that I'm pissed off, is that I start quoting fictional characters, and this quote in particular). It's not on point, perhaps, unless one considers childrearing work (as a parent of seventeen weeks and one day, I assure you it is) allocated by society (an arguable proposition which I support):

"The way a civilization produces its goods and allocates its work is the most sincere expression of its moral character."

Posted October 9, 2003 5:02 PM by adamsj

Rachel, (or anyone else) what advice do you have for "ordinary folks" who would like to be part of the solution?

If you're a parent, I highly recommend becoming involved in your child's district: volunteering, becoming part of the booster club, etc. I know it's difficult in today's world to juggle working and home life, trying to pay bills, yet I find it sad how many parents don't realize how important it is to be involved. This also offers an opportunity to network with other parents and find out if they're experiencing or have heard of problems as well.

If your child is the victim of bullying and the school system seems to be trying to sweep it under the rug, keep taking it to higher levels in the district. Heck, for myself, if the situation warrants it, I always consider going to the media as a viable alternative. The down side of this is that, although you might win a battle this way, you might make an enemy of the district, which is why networking with other parents (and teachers) is helpful.

I don't know any other advice to offer. We're in the process of setting ourselves as a Model Program, meaning we're documenting what we do and how to do it with an eye to helping other groups develop similar programs throughout the nation. Fingers crossed....

Posted October 9, 2003 6:56 PM by Rachel

spacewaitress - I was teased in elementary school and junior high and I think there were a lot of reasons why adults back then didn't intervene. I think some of the adults thought it would just be worse on the kids if they intervened -- I know *I* was sure that things would be worse for me if I broke the Kids' Blue Wall Of Silence and tattled to a teacher or some other authority figure.

Maybe the authorities were right to file criminal charges against the mother. I don't know. But even so, we can still feel compassion for this woman who was handed an enormous burden in life -- working two jobs, and CRAPPY jobs at that, raising a son alone -- not just a son, but a TROUBLED son -- husband in prison -- and found it too much to bear.

By the way, this is one of the things that I find most appalling about some conservatives' agendas, the notion that it's weak to be compassionate toward criminals, even if we also accept the need to punish them.

Robert L.: "And in my experience, bullyinng generally goes on in schools that are negligent about it or encourage it. To a certain extent, it's good to let kids fight their own battles; but part of the responsibility of a school administrator is to deal with stuations that have gone beyond the "boys will be boys" level. You can be sure that at least some of the teachers were quite aware of the general situation and did nothing about it. if anyone deserves to go to jail, it's the principal... "

That's very perceptive. Bear in mind that this kid wasn't JUST being teased, or having his nose bloodied in playground squabbles. He was being THROWN DOWN THE STAIRS. Throwing someone down the stairs isn't just roughhousing, it's attempted murder.

Debbie Notkin: "There's plenty of blame to go around, if we want to lay any at all, but I'm on the compassion and horror side of the ledger myself."

I agree.

Julia: "The mother was working two jobs to keep her kids indoors. After seeing what the system was doing for her child, perhaps that's all she thought she could do.

"A single mother working 60+ hours a week would have to be a hero to find a way to advocate for a child who the system was complicit in abusing. This mother wasn't that much of a hero. Probably she was also depressed and feeling helpless."

Perhaps the mother would have sought counseling for herself and her son, cleaned up the house, and taken other steps if she'd just had five minutes to sit down and think. But she was working those two crappy jobs, coming home to a squalid house and a broken son -- I can see where she might never have had those five minutes.

Perhaps this whole tragedy would have been averted if the mother could've just gone off to a retreat somewhere, spent two weeks in the woods in silent meditation, eating three squares a day, sleeping in a clean bed in a clean cabin that SOMEONE ELSE cleaned up. I'm not kidding about this -- I read that article and I see a woman who NEVER GOT AN OPPORTUNITY TO STOP AND THINK.

Sometimes when I need to think about life and stuff I just get in my car and drive for a couple of hours. Doesn't matter where. Sometimes I listen to the radio, sometimes I don't. Just being on the road helps me sort things out.

I can't imagine this woman ever had that opportunity.

S. Ann Ran: "They never will punish those kids. I know from experience. The only punishment any of the kids I was teased by got was from my own tears and words and hurt. I wrote a poem in high school, some ten quatrains long that I got permission to read to my English class, which wouldn't you know, held some of earliest teasers. It was me, in that narrative poem I read to them, about the pain, and I looked in their eyes as I read it. And I made sure they understood it was me and that the bullies were them. And by that time they were old enough to understand the shit they put me through. See, to me, the greatest punishment would be for those kids to understand exactly the extent of their crime against Daniel. As young as they are, it isn't going to happen now. And without Daniel, it may never happen. I barely got through to some of the boys who teased me; few people who haven't undergone this understand to what depths it hurts you."

If the people who bullied you understood how much you were hurt by it, many of them would be happy about it. Some people bully other people out of some variety of peer pressure, and they'd feel worse if they knew how much they hurt you -- although I don't think that would stop them. But there are some who simply cause other people pain because it feels good to them.

I'm not trying to be cynical here. As I said earlier, I was bullied in school, and I think now that people -- even children -- are much better than I realized when I was the target of bullying myself.

But some people, even children, are just plain BAD, and other people are weak and allow themselves to be led by the bad ones. Still others find it easier to ignore what's going on in the name of minding their own business.

I think one of the reasons I was bullied as a child is I wanted people to like me. I think if I had a child now who was different and odd and intellectual, I might well send the kid to karate class and tell him to beat the shit out of anybody who gave him a hard time at school. Ten years ago a friend told me that he gave his daughter the following advice: "I don't want you to ever be the first person to hit someone else ... if you do, I'll hit you when I'll get home ... but I don't want you to ever GET HIT without hitting back. If you do, you'll get TWO beatings, one at school, and one from me when you get home." At the time I thought that was a little bit appalling, now I am sympathetic. I was raised by parents who told me that fighting was simply WRONG, and I think things might have been different for me if I'd simply fought back some. Especially since so many of boys' fights aren't really fights, they're just little formal competitions where nobody really gets hurt.

I'm not trying to talk about anyone else's experience in the previous couple of paragraphs, just my own. And I realize that for many kids DO suffer serious injuries in childhood fights.

Posted October 9, 2003 7:14 PM by Mitch Wagner

I've deleted one potential post for excessive sprawl, and blown away another through careless; there are two points I still think worth mentioning.

Teresa's post suggests the school's neglect is something like a conscious choice. I think it's less than that; people tend to duck trouble automatically. A school bully can be a huge amount of trouble because bullies tend to run in families. Regardless of the circumstances, even good parents are rarely willing to believe their child is at fault; parental bullies can cause a huge amount of trouble for a school with their insistence that it's all(ways) the other children's fault. (Most people duck trouble without thinking about it....) And counseling a bully is not easy even without interference; there are two scenes of this in Etre et Avoir (documentary on a rural French one-room elementary school; now playing in Boston, who knows when it will be near anyone else), and they look like the most difficult task the teacher has.

Mitch comes closest to a point that is clear in comments in the the "Making no one more secure" thread (it drifted...); the worst thing about slow ]social[ drowning is that you don't realize you're drowning until you've lost all the energy you might use trying to get to shore. And you can bet that some of what little energy Judith Scruggs might have had left went to worrying about the prospect of having her child taken from her -- permanently, not just temporarily (yes, it's a Catch-22); if she didn't care enough for that to be a dire threat she wouldn't have been working two jobs.

There are no easy solutions. Perhaps she shouldn't have sued the school. (I'm not sure what she could have sued them for that would have made a real difference -- can a civil jury ]award[ counseling or discipline for teachers or students?) But, more clearly than the school's neglect, the counterattack looks like a conscious step to shift the blame to the person who was already most overloaded; I would love to think something disturbs the prosecuting attorney's sleep, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Posted October 9, 2003 8:48 PM by CHip

I think his school knew he was in trouble, and didn't care, and didn't act, because they thought he and his mother were powerless.

I think his school knew he was in trouble, and didn't care, and didn't act, because they thought he and his mother were white trash.

Posted October 9, 2003 8:51 PM by Isabeau

CHip -

I think you're making bullshit excuses for the school when you say the neglect isn't concious choice. If the kid's crapping his pants, either there's a serious medical problem or he's really seriously psychologically fucked up. They have a responsibility to address either of those things as serious matters.

Posted October 9, 2003 9:16 PM by Graydon

Graydon: I think you're making bullshit excuses for the school when you say the neglect isn't concious choice. If the kid's crapping his pants, either there's a serious medical problem or he's really seriously psychologically fucked up. They have a responsibility to address either of those things as serious matters.

Right. And we have a responsibility to make sure that they have the personnel, the money, and the bandwidth to address serious matters. We're not meeting that responsibility. ("We" refers to U.S. citizens in this case; my memory tickles me with a message that you aren't one, but I am.) Anyway, I don't believe you can hold anyone to a "responsibility" if they don't have the tools to meet that responsibility.

Posted October 10, 2003 3:16 AM by Debbie Notkin

I was bullied from age 6 to age 10 -when I began to put on a bit of muscle. I bleed forthis kid

Posted October 10, 2003 8:10 AM by DM SHERWOOD

Isabeau, that's one species of total powerlessness. At any rate, they concluded she couldn't make trouble for them.

Posted October 10, 2003 9:00 AM by Xopher

Yes, I feel sorry for lots of working single mothers with few resources and a hard road. But my mother, who worked for very little money for years, would never have let me soil myself without doing SOMETHING besides nag me to take a shower.

Elizabeth, with all due respect, you just don't get it. It sounds like your mother was an exceptional, heroic parent, for which you were fortunate, and for which I am sure you are grateful. However, I suggest you go back and re-read the original post, the linked articles, and all the comments. Daniel Scruggs wasn't bullied because he defecated in his pants. He defecated in his pants in order to try to escape the bullying.

It's naive to think that clean clothes and perfect hygiene would have prevented the bullying. Bullies pick on kids who are perceived to be weak or different. It could be not being "properly socialized," but what do you mean by that? In the brutal world of junior high, being anything but a lockstep conformist is enough to make you a target.

Try having a little empathy for this woman and her son. Again, I suggest you re-read the original post and the comments here.

Posted October 10, 2003 9:54 AM by spacewaitress

TO FURTHER PUNISH MRS. SCRUGGS IS INHUMANE AND CRUEL TREATMENT . IT'S NOT ENOUGH THAT THE WOMAN IS GRIEVING THE LOSS OF HER SON, NOW SHE IS TO BE SENTENCED TO A TERM IN PRISON? HERE IS A WOMAN WHO WORKED TWO JOBS AND MORE TO MAINTAIN A HOUSEHOLD RATHER THAN RELY ON WELFARE. CERTAINLY, WITHOUT ASSISTANCE SHE WOULD EXPERIENCE DIFFICULTIES MAINTAINING A CLEAN RESIDENCE. WHERE , WHEN AND HOW WAS SHE TO SEEK HELP FOR HER SON WHILE SHE WAS WORKING LONG HOURS TO "MAKE ENDS MEET". THIS WOMAN SHOULD BE COMMENDED FOR HER EFFORTS. SHE WAS DOING THE BEST THAT SHE COULD; A LOT MORE THAN ONE WOULD EXPECT FROM SOMEONE IN HER SAD LIFESTYLE. WHAT AN INJUSTICE TO FIND HER SOLELY RESPONSIBLE WHEN SO MANY OTHERS IGNORED THEIR RESPONIBILITIES TO COME TO THE AID OF HER SON. SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

Posted October 10, 2003 11:16 AM by RICHARD B. OLDEHOFF

Richard, your caps lock key is stuck. However, you point out one thing: the woman was not on Welfare. I wonder if she could have been, or if this boy is another victim of Welfare "reform"?

Posted October 10, 2003 12:21 PM by Xopher

Wow, spacewaitress.

Actually, I did read the whole thread. And the comments. And my empathy is there for the kid. Wholeheartedly. I *get it*.

So, to address your points. Based on what you say, a *normal* single working mother would solve her child soiling his pants by suggesting he shower and taking no further action.

I beg to disagree--a LOT. Yes, my mom was heroic. But she wasn't abnormally heroic. If I soiled my pants at age 12, I would have been hauled to the doctor. I know many single moms, and some single dads--all of em would haul their kid to the doctor. I'm willing to call the moms I know heroic. But taking your child to the doctor (where the resources, for depression, etc, counselling, support, and so on often come from) is NORMAL, even for stressed and overworked moms. She did not do this. So, abnormal and neglectful.

I do not see, and cannot understand, why a parent who is having a hard time is exempt from basic parenting responsibilities. Adults have many more resources, choices, knowlege available to them than children. If she could not provide the *basics* to her child, she should have found someone (including the state) who could. If believing that makes me a callous freak, so be it.

To your next point, will having clean clothes stop the bullying? No.

But as you so correctly point out, anything outside "normal" makes you a potential target. One way to stop being a target is to become as "normal" as possible. Sorry if that's a tough concept (eye roll here).

One way parents protect their children is to provide them the resources to be normal. Maybe the world shouldn't work that way, but it does. And, bluntly, I read that he not only soiled himself but had terribly bad breath. (Maybe you need to read the whole article). That's a hygiene or health problem.

Should bullying be stopped? Yes!!! But it's hard to become well-liked or even accepted if you have extreme halitosis. (Talk about naive, spacewaitress). And a normal parent would try to cure that. To refuse to take action on that is, my opinion, neglectful. How many homeless people do not get jobs because they smell, or look funny, or whatever? A lot. It's why you see so many rehab programs offering soap. The homeless programs don't assume that potential employers will "get over" their dislike of bad breath and reeking skin.

I have a very dear freind who was bullied badly because her clothing always smelled like cat pee or feces. She could not have friends over because the house was so very appalling--animal feces everywhere.

There are actions that parents take--like neglect and poor hygiene---that make their children easy targets.

Yes, it says the boy soiled his pants to escape school. But he was chosen as a victim for some reason before that. One way to reduce being a victim, especially if you cannot control the abusers, is to make yourself a harder target. And I am not blaming any victims, here. I am blaming the parents who are making choices that put their kids at risk. Some abnormalities, like extreme smell, are almost impossible to overcome with other coping mechanisms (e.g., being "nice" or "fun").

My friend with the horrible house learned to do her own laundry. If she hadn't, she never would have had any friends. Please read that carefully, spacewaitress, and ask yourself how many reeking homeless people you are currently friends with.

That kid needed help and his parent chose not to provide it. I refuse to accept the idea that the parent was "unable" due to her work. Maybe due to mental illness, hard to say. But I know way too many other working parents who are able to cope enough to provide the basics to accept overwork as an excuse.

As to your question, "poorly socialized". Did his mother teach him normal human interactions? Model appropriate behavior? Did the kid, as many extremely neglected kids do, act in a way that freaked out other people? Did he know how to play, to talk with others, appropriate distance to stand from someone, yada yada yada. Did he even know how to brush his teeth?

Parents provide their kids with opportunities to socialize with others of their age group and most importantly, model normal human behavior in the home. Kids without that are at an extreme disadvantage, and their parents are to blame.

Finally. I wonder, spacewaitress, whether you have been in a garbage type house. It truly is difficult to create food there. Sometimes the stench is so extreme that it is difficult to eat food brought in (fast food, for example). I base this on personal experience. Do you have any response to my suggestion that the boy may have been malnourished? (This could also add in to the pants soiling, small size, halitosis, not to mention depression.) Do you think being unable to provide food is an act of neglect? I do.

I was surprised to see you ignored my observation about the weapons. If he felt so safe at home, if it was such a refuge, why did he hide in a closet with weapons? Why not hang out in the living room and watch TV?

If he only brought the weapons to school, I could see some reason to believe he only feared school. But he didn't. And, since we're on the subject of hidden and created weapons, owning them for defense at age 12 is a sign of extreme behavior. It's a warning sign that I think any normal parent would heed because of the potential for self injury, even if it only meant a call to a nurse hotline. This is why I understand the jury's decision. I think weapons are a huge enough sign (of something) for any normal parent and taking no action is clear neglect.

As for lack of resources or options. A basic newbie foster parent would at least have provided food, clothing, supervision, and medical care. For do it yourself, free clinics abound, so that would have been an option. So do low cost charity clinics. So does medicaid (covers many kid related things). And hotlines exist for all kinds of things--she was in the system, she'd know (many are posted on walls, break rooms, etc). A normal parent, I maintain, would at least have made a phone call (to 911 if nowhere else) when she spotted weapons. That would have led to some resources, as your average hotline is going to take them as an extreme sign.

You are welcome to consider me callous. But my empathy is all with the kid on this. And, yes, I think the school should have paid and paid dearly, as I believe I said in my first post. But the mother also bears responsibility.

-Elizabeth

Posted October 10, 2003 1:06 PM by Elizabeth

Elizabeth - You suggest that the mother in this story may have been mentally ill. I would say that she MUST be mentally ill -- her behavior shows it.

Still, let's say the mother is to blame. What do we do about it? Put her through a criminal trial and then throw her in prison? Who is helped there? Bear in mind that criminal trials and prisons are expensive; how many children could we save with that kind of money?

Posted October 10, 2003 1:52 PM by Mitch Wagner

Just a comment, from the experience of someone I know, several years ago, here in West Virginia.

When it was reported to child protective services that there was a child/children who was/were the victim of mental and emotional abuse, child services told the reporting individual(s) that they were terribly sorry but unless there was evidence of physical abuse, there was nothing they could do, for they (child protective services) had more cases of children suffering abuse than they could handle.

They simply did not have the people and resources to help children unless there was physical danger.

Perhaps things are different in other areas with greater resources, and perhaps things have changed here in the intervening time, but if things are similar to that experience, it may help to explain how a child slips through the cracks such as happened to J. Daniel Scruggs.

With that experience, knowing that it is possible that the school may have attempted to report the issue and many have been told that there was nothing that could be done, I would probably hold the parent to a far greater degree of responsibility than the school.

As far as bullying goes, I agree with the earlier poster's comments. Nothing will ever truly be done about it, becuase I'm not sure anything can be done. I was lucky enough in high school that the custodian felt sorry for me and let me hide out in his "office" in the boiler room. Every child needs a refuge, it's just too bad that for J. Daniel Scruggs his only refuge was his closet, and that he didn't have anyone who was willing to take steps to help him. (My parents never knew about the bullying I suffered, because I never told them, but they did know I had problems and did what they could to help me.)

Posted October 10, 2003 1:54 PM by Michelle

Elizabeth: given the current political climate, I think you're still missing the point. The present power ruling -- not the principles of parenting, but the dominant paradigm right now -- is that making parents work is more important than anything else: child care, training for anything better than the worst work, anything. I would agree with your points if Judith Scruggs were in a beautiful setup (like, say, Toby Maguire's mother in Pleasantville) and her son had suddenly started soiling himself. But she wasn't. She was trying to keep what was left of her family together after her husband was carted off to jail (which would have damaged any social support network she had). She had two crappy jobs, one of them at the bottom of a very hierarchical system and the other trying to wring more performance out of people paid even worse than she was. How long had she been in this fix?

Various moral systems talk about the difference between knowing what is right and doing what is right; not enough of them deal with being able to do what's right. (cf T's sidebar on reframing the tax debate by recognizing that this country should be nurturing rather than Darwinian.)

And Graydon: what Debbie said, with the added note that "To get along, go along" (e.g., don't make waves and above all don't try to push a problem upstairs) is less a cynical comment on Theory X organizations than a fact of life. There are times I think the only solution is to wipe out the mess (of U.S. public schools) and start over -- but that's not unlike what Shrub et al. thought they could do in Iraq. I don't know a solution; I just think that even charging her was reactionary scapegoating by people who should have been trying to work out how to make sure this didn't happen again.

Posted October 10, 2003 3:29 PM by CHip

CHip, I get your point. I just don't agree. Living in a Pleasantville scenario is not required to take certain kinds of basic childcare actions imo. Hauling the kid to a free clinic doctor is free, for example. I am arguing that were resources available (however imperfect). And that she likely knew about them (being a teachers aide). And her son's illness (mental and maybe physical) was screamingly obvious. I see no evidence that she used them. Either due to lack of caring or to mental illness. I don't see her trying to keep her family together the way you do. Our definitions of trying are not the same.

Again, I know many poor people in similar or WORSE work-money circumstances. My family included. MOST choose differently than this woman. Political climate or no. I find the idea that anyone NOT living in a Pleasantville scenario isn't required to provide their children basic services chilling.

And, speaking of political climates, I think a parent who called the police, or CPS, or a teen hotline, or whoever, and claimed that their child had a spear and big knives would get some ball rolling, somewhere. Given the current attitude to preventing school weapon-related violence. Definitely absolutely positively? No. Would it have gotten a home check? Maybe, if only to remove the frickin' spear. And if she kept making calls, I think someone would have been able to help, even if it was only a doctor diagnosing expreme depression and helping the kid with meds or counselling.

The poverty ridden, working, prison-deprived people I know would have kept making calls or going to doctors if their kid exhibited these symptoms.

Mitch. As for the mental illness angle, I hesitate because she held down a job, and could call a lawyer and arrange to sue later. Some people really don't care about their kids. I can't tell if she was one of them from her actions. Maybe she just had disjointed ability to cope due to illness. I still think both are possible.

Either way, I don't think she's a capable parent. What if she has a baby? What if there were siblings? I don't think, if it was me, that I'd push for incarceration unless she had other kids. But then, sorry, but I would. Not to punish her, but to prevent her harming others.

-Elizabeth

Posted October 10, 2003 4:21 PM by Elizabeth

Sigh.

Elizabeth, points taken.

It's so hard. Sometimes I get angry when parents who don't have the resources to raise kids properly go ahead and have kids anyway. My own parents didn't really have the adequate emotional or financial resources to raise kids; when I was born, my mom was 19, and my dad was 16 (and already an alcoholic).

However, people who lack resources can and do have kids all the time.

That being the case, I think we need to do everything we can to help the kids, and the parents.

I think if this kid's mom had been capable of doing more, she would have. But she wasn't capable of doing more. She didn't have the emotional or physical resources to deal with her house and her son's problems. She was just trying to keep a roof over their heads, and, as Mitch Wagner said, probably didn't have "5 minutes to think."

Someone needed to reach out and help this mother and her son. Someone should have intervened a long time ago.

And as for why he was hiding in his closet with his knives and spears, who knows? It might have been because he was afraid of his mom, but I don't think that can necessarily be inferred. Maybe he just felt more secure sleeping in his closet. He was pretty messed up, after all. Maybe he had negative fantasies about the bullies breaking into his house, and felt like he had better be ready to defend himself.

The reason I didn't address it in my original post to you is because it seemed like too ridiculous a point to be worth addressing, and seemed of a piece with your eagerness to lay the lion's share of the blame on the mom.

Posted October 10, 2003 4:22 PM by spacewaitress

Hauling the kid to a free clinic doctor is free, for example.

What if she couldn't get the time off work?

Posted October 10, 2003 4:25 PM by spacewaitress

"That being the case, I think we need to do everything we can to help the kids, and the parents."

I agree.

And I'm sorry that your parents lacked resources and that you suffered for it.

But...at some point, parents must be willing to be helped. Or to ask for help. Or to hand over their children to others. And I think that point ought to come a LOT sooner than actual suicide. And the responsibility for asking for help falls on the parent, not the child.

As for not being able to get off work. I find this objection kind of uneblievable. This went on for a while, she could plan. The parents I know who make minimal efforts are able to cope with setting up and attending a doctor's appointment. And I know plenty who, in emergencies, skip work to go to the ER. It was just one example of many possibilities.

Do you seriously believe that just because she held down two jobs that there was nothing she could do and it was really up to CPS and the schools to figure it out?

Sure, the school is partly to blame. They didn't act to defend their student--they "did little" to quote the article. (Which implies something.)
The schools created the condition of bullying, but all of his depression? I don't think so. And they certainly didn't create his living conditions.

I think our most serious disagreement is about whether she was able to do something. I think there were plenty of things she could have done (should have done) and was able to do. But didn't. All of them within her means. That's why I hold her partly responsible.

And...I will just say this.

I don't think spears, knives, sleeping in closets, extreme body-odor, halitosis, and defecation require "5 minutes to think." I think they are breathtakingly obvious signs of serious crisis.

Again, I think our disagreement is mostly about what standard we hold people to as minimally able. I know way too many people who are poor or overworked and either able to cope (a lot more than she chose to) or who sought help to allow poverty or double jobs to take the blame for this tragedy. I am happy to see her as unwilling to get help (morally whacked), or mentally ill. But not morally normal and mentally normal and unable. If she could manage a Walmart, she could pick up a phone. And to think that this is somehow normal human behavior or an assessment of normal human capacities and priorities on the part of a single mom is (to me) insulting to moms, women--heck, humans everywhere.

As for the weapons, well obviously I don't think they're ridiculous. Some people seem so eager to lay praise on the woman for at least providing him physical shelter. I think, if he's hiding in his closet with a homemade spear, and a front area full of reeking garbage, dishes, and junk, then maybe that effort needs to be reassessed.

I just don't see that she provided him with any of the necessities. And I see it as her responsibility. And I don't see working two jobs as an excuse. And I see neglect as a serious crime.

I wish CPS or the school or a neighbor had intervened and taken the kid away and gotten him what he needed, and either tossed her in prison or gotten her psychiatric help, depending on what was wrong with her. Obviously not a popular opinion.

-Elizabeth

Posted October 10, 2003 5:34 PM by Elizabeth

Elizabeth, I don't have much first-hand knowledge of what would have happened if the mother had called the police to report that her 12 year old son had a stash of weapons, but my hunch is that it quite possibly could have made the situation worse. I can see three possible outcomes, I don't know their relative likelyhood:

1) the authorities intervene in a helpful way, the kid gets the help he needs, everyone's better off.

2) the authorities intervene in a negative way, and the kid ends up in the "juvenile justice" system, facing even nastier bullies, and the mother might also get in trouble.

3) the authorities do their best not to get involved.

Given that the school was already taking course #3, might the mother have thought that the odds of #2 outweighed the odds of #1?

The fact that the mother is being sentenced to prison suggests that some parts of the system are more punitive than helpful.

I'm not saying the mother shouldn't have asked for help, but sometimes when you're in a bad situation, asking for help can seem riskier than trying to cope with it yourself.

Posted October 10, 2003 5:47 PM by Jeremy Leader

I was checking out recent activity on the main Tufts University web pages this afternoon as part of the follow-up to having started replacing web servers here, and got a chuckle from this page in nielsenhayden.com being tagged as a leading "Interesting" referer in the log file summary reports.

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to back it up.

Posted October 10, 2003 6:07 PM by Bob Webber

Elizabeth, you don't know jack.

My bidness partner did 20+ years in clinical practice with developmentally disabled children, and when anybody brings up, say, school vouchers, she says that people don't understand, that they assume that all parents have an equal ability to advocate for their children.

This woman had no resources, no support network.

Sure there are free clinics...in some places. Connecticut is maybe better than other places. But getting low-income parents to bring their children to doctor's appointments is an uphill battle. There are so many obstacles in their way: inflexible work schedules, transportation problems.

And for God's sake, hasn't the woman suffered enough? My sister died 35 years ago in a freak accident, and my mom hasn't been a bit right since. There's no greater pain than burying your child97what is left for the state to punish her for? What can they do to her that she won't do to herself?

Posted October 11, 2003 6:34 AM by hamletta

What has been bugging me about the peculiar brand of justice documented in this story finally landed in my brain, and (of course) it's another quote from the same fictional author, Lemuel Pratt:

"The only crime of legitimate interest to society is the one that may yet be prevented."

Whether that woman could've done better--or, at least, done differently--I don't know. I can't see how she is going to do any harm in the future, though. Locking her up is a futile gesture.

I guarantee you, though, that just last week, at least one child at that school suffered due to the same sort of (let me be generous) carelessness that contributed to J. Daniel Scruggs' death.

Focusing on punishing (or justifying) this woman, pro or con, is avoiding the real issue. That's my government and my tax money running those schools and that Child Protective Service. Had that government been doing what it should have been doing, there would have been better treatment at school and some form of intervention at the home.

We live in a world full of damaged souls, and goodness knows, I'd love to help each one--we should help them--but I'm even more avid to stop damaging them.

Posted October 11, 2003 9:29 AM by adamsj

Elizabeth: (a lot more than she chose to)

That's the point you missed in my post. "Mental illness" might or might not be stretchable to cover her case, but she was clearly heavily stressed; your faith that she chose not to cope is touching -- but not likely to be touching reality.

This is no insult, despite your claim, to all the people you know who coped. Have you tried plotting what each of them had for a support system? And how sustained that support system was when their personal gales hit?

Heinlein, in one of his rare humanist comments, had a character say -"People are all right, mostly, as long as you don't strain 'em more than they're built for."- How can you know and compare what stresses your examples and Judith Scruggs were "built for" -- and trained up to?

I tend to agree with your opinion that some people shouldn't have children, or shouldn't have children in some situations -- but we don't know what her situation was thirteen years ago when Daniel was conceived. (And with Bush Sr. in charge, her chances of choosing if she realized she should choose not to would have been seriously reduced.) And I don't think ultimate stress testing in advance is a good solution either; "The Education of Tigress McArdle" shows that, and its consequences(*). Most people acquire, from their social matrices and not consciously, some fragment of the sort of I-can-survive-this-stress training that groups like Outward Bound provide formally and stepwise, but absent testing you can't tell in advance how far they can be stressed without starting to flake or fracture.

hamletta's "Pratt" quote has the right of the matter. Blame solves nothing, and the formal blame of a trial can actually be counterproductive; it makes people feel like they've done something good and can now go about their ordinary business, like the fish St. Anthony preached to -- or worse, like the beings who briefly flagellated themselves, then went on beating their slaves in "Silent in Gehenna". (How many of the jurors who convicted Scruggs had voted against tax increases that might have staffed the school better or paid her enough that she didn't need to take a second job?)

I can hear you saying I'm blaming society. I'm not; the one finger I point is at individuals who may have made selfish choices when they had more slack than Scruggs did. (Yes, I'm entitled to say this; I voted in favor of a graduated income tax that would have raised what I paid.</smug>)

It's all very well to say, as Heinlein usually does, that the righteous person takes responsibility no matter what. But most people just aren't that righteous. What do you do then?

(*) I wonder if Kornbluth realized how this contrasted with "The Marching Morons", which said that dumb people were outbreeding smart people; in TEoTM reducing the overall birth rate is a Communist plot.))

Posted October 11, 2003 11:27 AM by CHip

CHip,

If I could have one moment of artistic dictatorship:

I would decree that never again would The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress be printed, unless it were in an Ace Double with The Man Who Pulled Down The Sky, from whence Lemuel Pratt comes.

Posted October 11, 2003 12:12 PM by adamsj

[pedant]
And if I could have one moment of linguistic dictatorship:

I would decree that never again would the phrase "from whence" appear, as it is redundant. The correct usage is simply, "whence."
[/pedant]

:)

Posted October 11, 2003 1:53 PM by spacewaitress

Really? Damn. That's the second time I've used it today, too. And I read this yesterday--I shoulda known better, just because:

'The list also could be called, "10 COMMON PROBLEMS THAT DISMISS YOU AS AN AMATEUR," because these mistakes are obvious to literary agents and editors, who may start wording their decline letter by page 5. What a tragedy that would be.

'So here we go:

' 1. REPEATS

' Just about every writer unconsciously leans on a "crutch" word. Hillary Clinton's repeated word is "eager" (can you believe it? the committee that wrote "Living History" should be ashamed). Cosmopolitan magazine editor Kate White uses "quickly" over a dozen times in "A Body To Die For." Jack Kerouac's crutch word in "On the Road" is "sad," sometimes doubly so - "sad, sad." Ann Packer's in "The Dive from Clausen's Pier" is "weird." '

Posted October 11, 2003 2:29 PM by adamsj

Mother has 2 jobs.... she also has a kid in great need...she saw the signs....what is her job here?
a no-brainer....if she cannot help her child, she has to seek help. He was 13, a difficult age in any household. She should have seen his pain...she worked at his school, correct? Why did she work at a school? She had no control of her own life, why was she with other young people?I am so angry.....she should be put away.

Posted October 12, 2003 12:43 AM by Connie

Connie, what about the boy's teachers? Should they also be put away?

Posted October 12, 2003 6:38 AM by Yonmei

adamsj: I guess I'll have to dig up TMWPDtS, even if I'm not sure that John Barnes is a plausible counteragent to Heinlein. (NB: the source for my quasi-quote was I Will Fear No Evil, which probably just shouldn't be reprinted....)

You left out the most famous repeat in SF: "clench", by Stephen Donaldson. cf Langford's description of "clench racing": open any of D's book at random and see how long it takes to find the word -- I think he's being snarky when he says 30 seconds is a long game, but I've only read 1.5 of the 9 volumes of Covenant.

Posted October 12, 2003 9:06 AM by CHip

So here is my question. I have a student, who is not teased at our school, because she is an amazing artist and our students value that skill, but will be when she goes to the highschool. She has less than tidy clothes and unwashed hair most days. Hopelessly out of date fashion wise. But, her parents are religious fundementalists of some type, she and her many siblings are responsible for the household in part because the parents and several siblings are asbergers / autistic. The family is truely loving, but also just missing certain basics, like the understanding that you have to do laundry... They are resistant to any help that I (an art teacher) could offer. They are not criminaly neglectful... what can we do? I think schools do have a responsibility to help kids like this, but how? I have contemplated bringing shampoo and soap and clean towels and pulling the girls out of my class and sending them to the gym locker room, but what if the parents find out and feel I have crossed a line. Is that crossing the line? Hard to say.

Posted October 12, 2003 12:06 PM by Rachael

Um.

Elizabeth, I think people have already said most of what I thought of when I read your posts, so I'd just like to point out that you've spent more free time discussing this than the kid's mother probably had in a month.

Has it occurred to you that if her child, who was

a) clearly disturbed
b) an established target for bullies

and

c) apparently had mastered the use of personal offensiveness in self-defense

had gone into the social service system, he would have been exposed to even tougher kids? Bet she thought of that.

Having worked sixty hours a week regularly with a toddler in the house and little help, I can tell you that this poor woman was not home enough to make a mess. She probably walked in the door and collapsed.

If you worked a sixty hour week and you walked through the door and there was all that housekeeping that didn't get done last week and today's added mess and you couldn't ask your kid to help because he was locked in the closet with knives because of all the brutality he underwent at school, but the clothes he shit on were waiting for you, how hard would you charge into the kitchen to do dishes? Or would your brain shut down and you'd go to sleep and make yourself able to do it again tomorrow and escape for a few hours?

What if you couldn't advocate for your child without losing your job?

What if social services probably would have felt an obligation to report to the school that one of their aides had a child removed because she was a danger to him?

That the school would have been able to get rid of an unpleasant situation and possibly liability by firing her because she was clearly unfit to be around children, and as a useful corollary assumption their teachers were clearly not responsible for the kid's condition?

Was there anyone official involved in this who had not proved that they didn't give a shit about her or her kids, and whose path of least resistance didn't pass through destroying their lives?

I'm afraid I disagree. I really don't think you get it.

Posted October 12, 2003 12:35 PM by julia

Hi, Rachael,

You've got a tough question there, and I don't have a definitive answer.

Let me ask a couple of questions:

• Is this sort of help in your scope right now?
• If not, is that because she's not getting bullied yet? Or because it's not in your scope as an art teacher?
• If it's only because she's not getting bullied yet, would it be wrong to proactively intervene?
• If it's because it's not in your scope as an art teacher, is there someone else--counselor, school nurse--in whose scope this problem clearly falls?
• If there's no one in the school in whose scope this falls, is there any sort of social worker outside the school into whose scope the family falls?
• If not, is there a church authority (fundamentalists, right?) who might intervene?

I hope that helps and that, if it doesn't, you can find some other way to intervene.

Posted October 12, 2003 2:49 PM by adamsj

It probably is in my scope because I appear to be the only one worried about it. I think I'm just going to talk with the oldest sister and see what she thinks, maybe teach her how to do laundry, talk about showering frequency, etc. As you say, why not be proactive. I asked as much to slant the discussion towards the issue of the school's culpability. Schools are clearly responsible for keeping kids from getting thrown down stairs, but so often schools get asked to deal with things... hygine for instance, and we simply don't know how, we may not have resources, knowledge, or even time. I am a mandatory reporter, if I know of abuse I have to report it, and Minnesota has really good child protective services. But how do you report: "this kid tends to have greasy hair."? It's a tricky issue for teachers, most of whom have no training in social-work.

Posted October 13, 2003 4:12 PM by Rachael

CHip - This is pretty trivial in context of the current discussion, but I think you're giving Heinlein a bum rap. Do not confuse the writer with his more gormless fans.

Posted October 13, 2003 6:26 PM by Mitch Wagner

On a more serious note: Julia is making the same point I was trying to make.

And I don't think anybody's answered my earlier question: What do we gain at this point by locking the mother up? And is it worthwhile to lock the mother up, given the very real and large costs that will impose on the criminal justice system? I believe I read somewhere that a criminal trial costs millions of dollars -- not surprising, considering the number of people involved and the fact that a serious trial is likely to take a week or so. And I believe I also read that incarceration costs a few tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Posted October 13, 2003 6:29 PM by Mitch Wagner

Rachael, your concern is wonderful. Although, if the girl isn't getting teased in junior high, which are the worst years for any kid to go through, she'll probably be OK in high school.

Hell, I had greasy hair half the time when I was a kid. You grow up, and learn that normal people take showers on a regular basis.

Posted October 13, 2003 7:16 PM by spacewaitress

Mitch,

I think you might be thinking of me, not CHip.

Warning: There are mild spoilers in here, but you'll have to work to experience them as such.

I started to write this earlier this week and didn't post it because I didn't want to get in the way of Rachael's important question, but now that we've got her back in sight, too, I'll send it:

I love Heinlein.

I also think The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress has had the most pernicious influence on political thought in America of any twentieth-century work of propagandistic fiction, with the possible exception of Atlas Shrugged. It's a bloodless, candy-ass vision of revolutionary war with exactly three paragraphs of genuine feeling. No sympathy, no empathy, morally blank.

There are other books which would do for the purpose--any good SF novel which gives a somewhat realistic description of war or revolution--but I've been a partisan of Barnes' writing ever since the woman who is now my wife loaned me Orbital Resonance, in no small part because I see so much of my own change over the years reflected in the changes in his writing.

I read The Man Who Pulled Down The Sky as a response to The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.

I'm probably wrong about that (and about Kaleidoscope Century being a response to Friday) but those are still novels I believe should be paired.

TMIAHM posits a libertarian revolution against a distant world government exploiting the honest farmers of Luna to feed the teeming masses of India.

TMWPDTS posits a communitarian revolution against a free-market society exploiting the poor inhabitants of Earth in order to to keep down and eventually defeat the leftish Condfederation.

Heinlein couldn't write human evil (two stories in Assignment in Eternity excepted), so his villains are either misguided or unbelievably stupid.

Barnes is very, very good with evil, and his villains know just what they're doing. I can see them, right now, in the dock at Nuremburg or The Hague, explaining, justifying.

It's a perfect match:

In TMIAHM, the welfare state is killing Luna through unbelievable (I speak here as a reader) ignorance. They were just too stupid know what they were doing.

In TMWPDTS, Solar Electric and the Orbital Republics have knowingly destroyed the ozone layer and are slowly killing Earth's people on free-market principle, as Mendenhall explains:

"There's a lesson in systemic evil for you, Saul. There was always more than enough power to do it [replace the ozone layer], just in the reserve capacity of the Republics. Solar Electric, though, wasn't going to give it away free, and the Republics weren't going to get involved in anything as 'socialist' as buying the power and using it for a public good like that."

That's a balance to the Libertarian Luddism (for what is government if not a machine?) of Heinlein.

At his best--think "Logic of Empire"--Heinlein had enough empathy to feel for all sides in a struggle. At his worst, he produced heroes--and ideas--that beg to be shoved out an airlock.

(One bonus observation, perhaps not really relevant:

(Heinlein's narrators are mostly reliable--when they aren't, they're self-deluded. With the notable exception of TMWPDTS, Barnes' narrators are generally a bunch of damn liars.)

There's more to The Man Who Pulled Down The Sky--with the possible exception of Finity (and note that is Barnes' weakest book), Barnes' great, overarching theme is trust and betrayal; TMWPDTS has betrayals, in spades--and this book is no more representative of the ideas in Barnes' body of work than Beyond This Horizon is of Heinlein's.

In Heinlein's case, that's a damn shame.

Barnes? Hard to say. The Man Who Pulled Down The Sky may be a bit too idealistic to live comfortably next to Earth Made of Glass. Lemuel Pratt, however, seems to disagree:

"You're part of my game now, you know."

Posted October 13, 2003 8:35 PM by adamsj

adamsj - Nope, I addressed my post to CHip, and I meant CHip; he refers to Heinlein as having a "rare humanist moment," and made a couple of remarks which led me to believe that CHip, like many sf fans, thinks Heinlein was a hardhearted social Darwinist. As a matter of fact, I don't see where you mentioned Heinlein