I still plan on posting the "Hoovering" article, but in the meantime the Kimberly Sullivan case caught my attention.
Occasionally I make note of articles having to do with child abuse. Many of these cases are egregious, but even in milder child abuse cases, there seem to be some similarities such as not hearing a child out or not caring what they have to say (i.e. what they are going through), not caring about the child's feelings or their physical, mental and emotional health (neglect), "home-schooling" (also common, especially for controlling caretakers or caretakers who are trying to present a different image to the world than who they are at home), rageful caretaking where continual and escalating "punishments" put a child's welfare at risk, not feeding the child an adequate amount of food, or the wrong kind of food, or force feeding, or in general food and weight are a constant issue (super common), absurdly long "time outs", separating a child from the rest of the family or false imprisonment (common), reckless endangerment and other kinds of offenses which are talked about in forums for many, many adults of child abuse. Most just don't go as far as this story portrays.
But I think it is important to report on how far child abuse can go especially since abuse, in general, always escalates. It is obvious it did in this case. It is also why children cannot make up with parents who are abusive (it is ineffective) and why it is wrong to expect them to do so.
So far, at the time of this writing, some other stories that I decided to write briefly about include The Kornegay case (mentioned in this post), the Turpin case, the Jeffrey Epstein case, and the Brian Coulter - Gloria Williams case.
As for this news-worthy report, here are the headlines from The New York Times:
He Was Held Captive in His Room for Decades. Then He Set It on Fire.
Firefighters found a 32-year-old man who weighed 68 pounds. The police say his stepmother locked him away when he was 12. - written by Sarah Maslin Nir
In this case, the 12 year old child is locked in a room in a house belonging to his father and stepmother, and at 36 years old, decides he will take a chance with a lighter he found in a jacket leant to him by his stepmother and start a house fire in hopes that he will be rescued by authorities.
However, before then, a principal had found the boy coming to school with a dirty lunch pail, devouring his lunch in a restroom, and drinking the water in a urinal. He came to school looking hungry and disheveled.
The principal made calls to the Department of Children and Families to no avail. The authorities kept reporting back that the child was fine.
So one has to wonder what happened. Did the family quickly clean up their act or put on an act before the authorities arrived (common), or vacuum the house and get rid of things that were filthy or might make them "look bad" before they arrived, or were the authorities themselves blind as to what was going on, or lazy about investigating, or overlooking things they shouldn't have overlooked, or took the parents word for what was happening (can be too common, and of detriment to the child), or forgot to look in on the case after the boy went into home schooling?
What are the excuses here, and is there going to be an investigation into them?
Right now this is just the bare bones of the story (it just came out). I hope I can find out more information as reporters delve into this horrific case.
The story somewhat concludes with these paragraphs:
... Since the fire, the man has been ensconced in a hospital rehabilitation center, according to Amanda Nardozzi, the executive director of Safe Haven of Greater Waterbury, a nonprofit organization that has been helping coordinate his care.
According to Ms. Nardozzi, he will need extensive physical rehabilitation — court documents state he has deformed knees and muscle wasting — and a carefully managed diet to avoid re-feeding syndrome, where a sudden flood of nutrients can kill a person near starvation. He is also receiving mental health counseling, Ms. Nardozzi said, funded in part by an official GoFundMe that has already raised over $200,000. ...
I hope he can find healthy relationships, physical health, mental health that begins to erase so many years of trauma, and emotional health (being with people with empathy so that it becomes his new reality and world view). Right now there is a "Go Fund Me" for the victim's care which has already raised $20,000. The article did not provide a link to that fund-raising campaign, but eventually maybe it will be publicly posted so that others may contribute.
UPDATES TO THE STORY:
* This USA Today article shows what the inside of the house looked like around the time of Ms. Sullivan's arrest. The squalor and filth reminds me of pictures of the Turpin family's home who I mentioned above. Ms. Sullivan's attorney objected to the photos being publicized by the police.
* Bodycam video shows rescue of Connecticut man allegedly held captive by parents for over 20 years - from Channel 6 ABC News.
Videos record the 911 call, the house on fire and other incidentals having to do with the case.
* The CBS version of the story. The story talks to one of Sullivans lawyers on the case, and tells reporters that his client, Ms. Sullivan, is shocked by the allegations against her.
My thoughts? How can that be unless abuse has been totally normalized and not seen as egregious since she was a child? And how could she not know the law on this when similar cases are on T.V. and social media?
* 'He Was in Control': Father of Man Claiming Stepmom Held Him Captive Made Decisions About His Son's Care, Claims Her Lawyer
The lawyer for Kimberly Sullivan tells PEOPLE that Kregg Sullivan determined how his son was raised, not his client. - by Chris Spargo for People Magazine
At the end of the article is a reminder to call authorities if you suspect a child is being abused:
If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
The comments are interesting.
The father was the one to give the orders. But did she have to follow them? Is this sycophancy that has gone terribly wrong? And especially after her husband's death?
One has to wonder where she went in her mind to think that this was right. And this is the question of all sycophants who are with people who break the law, abuse, bully, starve, and show very few ethics or empathy. It's not like he would come back from the dead to put fear in her.
I wonder how this case will play out.
Are "orders" from neglectful, abusive people a good-enough defense in a court of law?
I'm waiting for the answers obviously.
It is true that when looking at cases like this we are looking at the worst ones, but that many scapegoat's lives have resemblances to what happened to this kid only in lesser forms.
ReplyDeleteSince you brought up things that other scapegoats go through, is there any way you could write some posts on some of these?
I grew up in a middle class family where my parents raged all of the time, so that rang a bell. All of us were home schooled. All of us saw how our parents were like angels to other kids, but were mean and physically abusive to us behind closed doors. In fact our mother had the reputation of being the best of babysitters. We didn't know how that was possible with the lack of food, lack of attention and constant abuse we received. But most of all they didn't feed us enough. We were always finding a way to get invited to a neighbor's dinner so that we wouldn't be stuck with meals like watery pea soup for dinner, or a few pieces of toast, or a bowl of popcorn, and sent to bed at 7 pm even when we were teenagers and where our bedtime was used for our parents to chow down on rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes, salads and chocolate mousse for dessert. And they threw that in our face on some mornings and laughed at our reactions of wanting that kind of food. They also allowed themselves plenty of T.V. while we were relegated to only one half hour a week.
You said food issues are common, but is this common?
Yes. From my own perspective gleaning forums and groups where survivors of child abuse talk about their experiences this is more common than one would think. I think a lot of our population would be surprised, in other words.
DeleteAre all survivors of child abuse going through hunger and lack of food? No. Are all child abuse survivors home schooled? No. But it is something you hear over and over again, so it isn't uncommon. It may not even reach the 25 percentile of abusive households run by people with heavy narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder traits. But even if it's 5 percent, it's more troublesome than society should tolerate or let slide in my opinion.
Are all survivors of child abuse exposed to a lot of rage? Or maybe we should term it as pervasive escalating rage. The answer to this is probably an almost 100 percentage yes, but there is a possibility of a 90 - 98 percentile outcome. This is taking into account covert rage (i.e. scheming the downfall of someone else out of internal rage) still counts as rage.
If you think about a person whose number one agenda is power, control and domination for themselves, what better way to control children through food? Kids put food pretty high in importance in their lives.
In the Turpin case and according to reports on them, the parents starved their kids, punished them for getting water above their wrists, forbade bathing, homeschooled them and kept some of them locked to their beds in chains, even their adult children. Having starving children means they are too weak to seek being rescued, to fight back, to flee the household, to negotiate better treatment, and so on. Fight, flee, freeze and fawn are the major trauma responses, and if the parents are so controlling and afraid of abandonment from their children because they've abused them too much (and the kids realize it to some extent), then holding them hostage, homeschooling and starving them is one way parents like this can go.
In terms of narcissists spoiling themselves and denying basics to their children, there is enough evidence from psychologists who study narcissism, that narcissists feel they are "more special" than other people, thus more deserving, more entitled. If they had a motto it would be "For me, not for thee". The shorthand for this is called "hypocrisy".
I forgot to address your question about writing on this subject - yes, I have a post started. This one will take me awhile.
DeleteIt will also cover other food issues. Some other topics are force feeding way past the toddler stage, using "You're not going to eat at the table with us. Go to your room!" as a style of punishment. Feeding children foods that they really don't like (the shock factor). Feeding children food that is not nutritious or made up totally of sugar products on purpose, i.e. when they are aware and educated enough to know rules of nutrition, and also know that what they are doing is a form of neglect.
In other words, it won't just be about a lack of food.
I've been reading your posts for quite a while and this one brought up some issues with my parents.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if rage is abuse. Our parents always said their rage was due to my sister and I and how we acted, but our brothers were spared even if they acted the same way. Is that common? We both felt that was something was wrong with their judgement to treat us so differently. But they also tried to convince us as adults that rage which they always tried to reinterpret as anger was the result of us, not them, and that it was part of parenting. The punishments also seemed too severe for what we did or said and about half the time they weren't interested in the truth before punishing us. It was like they were angry and the next step without thinking anything through was to punish us. We both had trouble understanding what we were being punished about.
They still think of themselves as good parents after all of this. My sister and I still roll our eyes. There has never been a speck of awareness about how they treated us and no acknowledgement that it was undeserved and unjust since our brothers lived under totally different rules.
Yes, rage is considered to be abusive, especially if it is pervasive. It is also dependent on whether it is directed at someone, either overtly or covertly. The difference between anger and rage:
Deletehttps://www.google.com/search?q=the+difference+between+anger+and+rage
From reading articles, research, forums and hearing child abuse survivor stories, punishments by their perpetrators were very common. The bulk of perpetrators tend to be personality disordered (Cluster B personality disorders). Unjust and undeserved punishments are part of this picture too.
Punishments are usually an off-shoot of rage. In the case of grandiose narcissists punishments tend to be overt: lack of freedom, silencing what you have to say, lecturing, dominating, isolating, lots of threats, shaming, blaming, DARVO-ing, lack of empathy for your feelings, circular arguments, overt trashing of your self esteem followed by a refusal to speak to you. For covert vulnerable narcissists the rage and punishments come in the form of silent treatments, blame-shifting, false narratives, playing the victim, revenge plans, pervasive smear campaigns, an on-going agenda of lots of triangulation, abandonments, scheming your downfall whether that be career, slander, false narratives. For malignant narcissists it is a combination of both the overt and covert styles of punishments with a willingness to break the law to hurt you, and to create an environment of menace and fear.
Lack of awareness for all types (automatic action) is common.
Arrogance, not feeling accountable, caring more about their appearances rather than their character, and splitting people into all good and all bad camps is all part of the disorder.