THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 12, 1995 TAG: 9506120037
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 257 lines
At age 8, the boy threatened his mother with a butcher knife and pulled a sink off the wall in anger.
At 14, he killed mice with rocks, tortured snakes and threw frogs into a fire during a camping trip.
Two months later, he smeared white paint on his face and blackened his lips like Eric Draven, the character who crawls back to Earth from the dead, bent on revenge, in the movie ``The Crow.''
Then the boy, stocky and nearly six feet tall, a boy who calls himself ``psycho-man,'' crept out his first-floor bedroom window and went to school as the Crow.
He has seen the movie dozens of times - so many times that his mother eventually locked it away.
``That's not normal,'' she said. ``He was just mesmerized by it. He loves rain. The Crow loved rain. He doesn't like it when it's nice and sunny anymore. That scares me.''
The Crow comes up in the boy's conversations and appears in his drawings. The boy, who wears a silver skull earring in his left ear, is a talented pen-and-ink artist who someday wants to be a comic book illustrator. His drawings mirror the moodiness of the dark movie, filled with cursing, fighting, drugs and shattering glass.
But ``The Crow'' is also a love story whose message is that ``real love is forever.''
And this teenager's story is also a love story of sorts - about a mother who hasn't given up, who has struggled for years with a child whose brown eyes flash as he flies into rages, spouts obscenities and lashes out violently.
The boy, whose name is not being used to protect his identity, is an example of what experts say is a common dilemma - juveniles entering the court system because of mental health problems. Typically, these children cross over into the juvenile justice system about age 13 or 14.
This 14-year-old's story is one example of how the lines blur, of how emotional troubles become crimes, of how children become ensnared in a juvenile justice system ill-equipped to give them what they need.
The boy's first brush with the law came in March 1994 when his mother had him arrested for assaulting her. She had warned him that she would press charges if he struck her a third time. He had hit her twice the year before - one of those times breaking her glasses. This time, he punched her in the back.
``I didn't know where else to go,'' his mother said in a recent interview. ``I used to sleep with a baseball bat by my bed because I didn't know when he was going to go off. I was afraid of him.''
Getting her only child help through juvenile court was one of the best things she's ever done, she now says.
``I think if I had not put him in the court system, I might not be here,'' the mother said, weeping. ``My son might not be here.''
The boy is one of a large number of youths whose troubles with juvenile court could be avoided if their mental health problems were addressed sooner, says George Pratt, director of Mental Health Services for Norfolk. He estimates that as many as half of the youths who step through the doors of juvenile courtrooms fit that category.
Many of the youths who get in trouble with the law as teenagers fall behind and become frustrated as early as fourth grade, experts say. Some of them can be identified as early as kindergarten, Pratt says.
As in the case of so many youths, the 14-year-old's problems were evident years ago.
When he was 8, his parents divorced. He started seeing a counselor. That was also the year he threatened his mother with the knife and pulled the sink off the wall.
``As a mother, you're incredibly guilty,'' his mother said. ``What am I doing wrong? It seemed like every three days I'd have to go pick him up at school. What's been frustrating is it's taken so long to diagnose him.''
It got so every year for five years, she moved so her son could enroll in a different school.
She remarried a year ago. Although she realizes she can't watch her son every hour of the day, she has quit work to focus her attention on him.
``I'm finally understanding his mental conditions,'' the mother said. ``To look at him, everyone just thinks he's an out-of-control child who needs the tar beat out of him.''
When the 14-year-old first came before the courts, a judge referred him to a probation officer - essentially putting him on probation for having a fight with his mother - and requested a psychiatric evaluation.
On a July 1994 camping trip, his probation officer caught him killing and torturing animals.
In August, the boy got angry at home. He threw himself against the wall and screamed. Then he overdosed on anti-depressants in front of his mother. ``That was the first time he was calling out for help,'' his mother said. ``He knew he was out of control and he didn't know why.''
After a visit to the emergency room, the boy spent a few days in a psychiatric center.
``When my son has these outbursts, he's always very sorry afterward,'' his mother said. ``He doesn't know why he did it.''
Last Sept. 26, his mother committed him to a state psychiatric hospital after he choked a girl at school and left marks on her neck.
When asked to explain, he told his mother: ``I was just playing with her.''
``It was like he was on the edge of fantasy and reality,'' his mother said. ``There was one point in my life I was ready to put my child in a car and drive off a cliff. I couldn't take it no more.''
Committing him ``was the hardest thing I ever did,'' she said.
Within weeks, doctors described the boy as being one of the most disturbed they'd ever seen. The diagnosis: he is severely emotionally disturbed, hyperactive and has attention deficit disorder.
However, he made rapid progress and returned home in December.
Life went smoothly for the boy for several months, until an art teacher confronted him about a recurring sadistic theme in his drawings.
It's a sore spot for the boy, who believes his drawings are misunderstood.
They are intricate, layer within layer of faces and knives and guns, men and women with flowing hair, blood dripping from wounds, and violent exclamations about pain and death in the voice balloons. The drawings sometimes depict fantasy characters ripping the heads off their victims with their bare hands.
The boy argued with the art teacher and was suspended.
Soon afterward, he was caught carrying a knife at a Norfolk high school, where his best friend was a student. Within a week, he was caught carrying a second knife, this time a Rambo-like weapon. At that same time, he was charged with breaking into cars and taking cigarettes, cassette tapes and condoms.
``Obviously we have to bring him to court,'' said Kevin J. Moran, Norfolk's court services director. ``Whether it's a mental health problem or not, he could kill someone walking around with knives. He'll get thrown into a juvenile correctional center. He'll be off the streets, but he'll be back as dangerous as ever with the possibility of doing who knows what in four or five years.''
After the boy was caught with the knives, his probation officer took him before a judge for violating his probation. The judge imposed 15 days of detention in April and 30 days of community service.
So far, the punishment seems to have worked.
The boy is working after school at a recreation center with physically handicapped children and adults. He went bowling with them one day. Sometimes he helps deliver supplies. He likes the work so much that he plans to obtain a work permit so he can take a summer job there.
``I'm ecstatic,'' the boy's mother said recently. ``It's like in the last month or six weeks I've seen him become responsible. He even takes the trash out without me asking him to. He's doing such positive things right now. He's treating people like he wants to be treated. He doesn't get upset real easily anymore.''
Several months ago, Norfolk's Mental Health Director Pratt said the boy ``presents the most disturbing clinical picture'' he had seen in his career. Contributing to that picture were the boy's drawings and his escalating violent behavior, Pratt said.
``If we're not able to put him on a mental health track where there may be some hope of resolving these problems, he's going to get on a juvenile justice track,'' said Moran, the court services director. ``We diagnose it right, but we're using a methodology that works with delinquents but not with these kids.''
Pratt says society continues to treat youths differently from adults. ``We don't put adults with chronic mental illness in prison,'' he said. ``We haven't done that for hundreds of years.''
If the child were an adult, Pratt says, services would be available.
For so many children who cross into the juvenile justice system, rehabilitation is the wrong answer, he says.
``If it's a mental health issue that's getting them in trouble, corrections can never be successful,'' Pratt said. ``The point is to identify that this is a mental-health factor that has brought them there.''
Rehabilitation is designed around social control, Pratt said. Yet none of the youths with mental-health problems come to juvenile court because they were trying to break social norms. They land in court because they are unable to balance their emotions with the social consequences, he said.
This boy's case exposes a serious problem in Virginia, Moran said.
``Because there is not a proper mental health response available, he will become further entrenched in the juvenile justice system, and after that, the adult system,'' Moran said.
The state lacks long-term care for mentally disturbed juveniles, experts say.
The boy will get some mental health care along the way, but probably not what he really needs, Moran predicts.
``The scary thing is that people don't stay locked up forever,'' Moran said. ``In the periods he's not locked up, he will pose a terrible threat, and it's a lottery who will get hurt by him. He's a time bomb.''
The boy's problem has been identified. He now takes Ritalin to help him stay focused, and Clonidine to control his outbursts. Yet the drugs are not the complete answer.
For now, a home-based therapist is available to the boy and his family 24 hours a day. Whether he needs a walk on the beach to talk and blow off steam, or transportation to an interview for a new school or job, Robert Neuville is there.
Neuville also has arranged for the boy to take an art class at a local university and found a computer for him to practice his computer graphics skills. His art will be exhibited as part of the school's show in August.
``I knew one day my son's art was going to be shown somewhere,'' his mother said. ``This is just the beginning.''
In her living room are five pieces of his art. One is a toucan he drew in charcoal when he was 7; another is an angry self-portrait he drew when he was hospitalized. But her favorite is the pen-and-ink drawing of a woman with flowing hair and full lips. The right side of her face is beautiful; the left is a skull. She carries a bouquet of roses.
The boy recently shaved off his brown hair. He now wears a goatee. He attends school and cuts grass on the weekends. He smiles more now than ever before.
Neuville considers part of his job to be teaching the boy limits on his behavior.
``He's aware of what he is doing,'' Neuville said. ``It's just the difficulty of controlling the impulse. He just doesn't think ahead. (The boy) does hurt. And he hurts a lot. He hurts because he has this tremendous talent and he has this learning disorder and the separation between the two causes frustration.''
Authorities hope for the best but worry about the boy's future.
``At some point we have to hold him accountable,'' said Henry Evans, his probation officer. ``My concern is that he'll end up committed and sit there for six to nine months or a year and go nowhere.''
Experts know little about the cause of antisocial behavior among children.
In adult prison populations, learning disabilities are present in five times the number as in the general population. No study has ever been done on the incidence of mental disorders among juveniles, Pratt and other experts say.
``If kids can't sit there and learn like everyone else, they're going to get in trouble,'' Pratt said. ``If they get in trouble in school, they're probably going to get in trouble in the streets.''
Pratt and Moran hope to obtain federal grant money to study the relationship between mental illness and delinquency. There has never been a national or large-scale study done to examine those areas. Past studies have focused on factors such as poverty, single parenthood, drugs and economics.
The goal is to identify as early as possible the youths coming into the juvenile system who have mental health problems, then have court services and mental health services work as a team to come up with a treatment plan.
``These kids have a lot to overcome,'' Moran said. ``When you start working with them at 13 or 14, you've got so much to overcome that the prospect is that much more difficult.''
By that age, the children have developed a hardened and hopeless attitude. They've failed at much of what they've tried to do, and in many cases their families have turned on them because of all the court appearances. They use bravado to cover their fear.
Moran worries that the public will react against all juvenile offenders because of the small percentage who are the serious offenders.
``The majority of kids who come through juvenile courts are kids who've made one or two mistakes and can be turned around,'' Moran said. ``You'd hate to see the juvenile system changed so that it no longer offers the protection to juveniles that it has for a century. We want to be able to deal with both those groups within the context they deserve.''
In February, the boy reached out for his mother in their kitchen. Conditioned to him hurting or trying to hurt her, she drew back. But he was just trying to hug her.
``Mom, I love you,'' he told her. ``I'm just out of control.''
``He never hugged me and told me he loved me before,'' his mother said.
That's one reason she's convinced his therapy is working.
But she knows her son continues to walk a tightrope. His past juvenile offenses of carrying knives and breaking into cars could come back to haunt him if he gets into any more trouble. His mother is terrified that his behavior will land him in a juvenile correctional center.
``If he goes away for any amount of time, I've lost my son, and I know that,'' she said.
That's why Neuville, the home-based therapist, views the situation as a race against time. He sees the boy six days a week, sometimes twice a day.
The boy ``is working hard to save himself,'' Neuville said.
The therapist, who has worked with the boy since December 1994, also sees a boy committed to his art and his education.
``Can we capture his competency quick enough so that it builds his self-esteem and gets him out of the court system?'' Neuville asks. ``As we're doing that, every now and then he breaks a law. . . . This kid can still make it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
This pen-and-ink drawing is his mother's favorite and hangs in her
living room.
KEYWORDS: JUVENILE MENTAL ILLNESS by CNB