An open letter to a professor I had in seminary....

The Heartbreak Kid, part infinity....

Hello Dave, and thank you so much for your concerned response. God has moved powerfully in the situation I approached you about already, so I think I can give you the gist – and ask my questions – in writing, and see where we go from there, if that is OK.

I will try to be succinct, but it is a bit involved:

Six weeks ago, we had a ten-year old boy dropped on our school from DOCS (Department of Child Safety). His natural Aunt, Ingrid, who had been awarded emergency custody, was in the office in tears, telling us the most horrific tales of abuse that this boy had suffered: sexual, emotional and physical. She said he had been neglected, dangerously over-medicated, abused emotionally, beaten and “rented out” to a family friend overnight, and was “the most unloved boy” we had ever met. Naturally, we were aghast, and incredibly moved to help this child.

Well, Joe proved to be the most difficult child most of us had ever met. Joe came from a family that was quite candid about the fact that they had a long and involved history of mental illness. He could not read, could not write and had no numeracy skills to speak of. He was completely unsocialized, unable to function in a classroom setting, disruptive, violent, self-harming, overly-sexualized and hyper active. He was disobedient and disorderly and put himself and other children in danger. At times, he would run away, or had to be physically restrained. We suspected that he not only had ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder), but was intellectually impaired and had short-term memory problems. He also had a fetish for knives and guns. Yet when he was good, he was as sweet as cherry pie. In fact, the only thing he really seemed to relate to and focus on was the bible I gave him (a GREAT kid’s version of the Gospel of Mark put out by the Bible Society) (his whole family are Jehovah’s Witnesses).

Joe spent some time with his foster-family (his natural aunt and uncle) who shortly after obtaining custody of him filed abuse charges against Leilani, Joe's natural mother. We were told by Ingrid that Leilani was “making trouble” by preventing Joe from receiving medical and psychiatric care, and that Leilani herself was dangerously unstable, and disrupting their lives “because she could”. Joe had some good days when he was almost normally behaved – and he was indeed learning to read and write - but whenever there was contact with his mother, Leilani, Joe’s behaviour deteriorated to the point where he was uncontrollable, and last week we had to remove him from the premises. We were told that the family had wanted to remove Joe from Leilani’s care since he was 2 weeks old.

Joe was unfortunately sent to live with his aging grandparents (after it came to light that he might have been molesting his younger female cousins – Ingrid’s daughters), who absolutely could not control him, and who – with deep regret – refer to him as “a nightmare”. The communication between the two sisters that have care of Joe– his natural mother, Leilani, and his foster mother, Ingrid – had broken down to the point where each felt the other hated them and was deliberately withholding information about Joe from the other out of spite (it turned out that DOCS was preventing the free exchange of information). At the school, we had reached the point of sending Joe away, as we simply were not equipped to deal with a child like that.

When I contacted you, the situation was tragic, and I will admit I had no idea how to pray for this child and his family.

Spiritual Warfare is a concept I have only recently been introduced to – and through deeply disturbing circumstances involving my own family. To an Anglican, it’s theoretically theological, but we really don’t go in for that sort of thing, do we? But as a practicing Baptist now, and one with many friends in AOG circles, I have come to rethink that.

I know that praying for healing for the family is a big part of the prayer support we want to offer them; but there is so much going on there I don’t know how to pray for them. I have so many questions: what if this is some sort of spiritual battleground and there is more here that meets the eye? How do you pray when you don’t even know what to pray for? Who do you involve? How do you involve your prayer team and still respect confidentiality?

This situation has raised so many challenging questions about prayer and prayer support; and though Bruce, my husband – a man with a real gift for prayer – and I talked about it at length; as I say, I was deeply moved to contact you and seek your experience and understanding of specialized prayer (if there is such a thing).

CAVEAT:

We were told last Thursday that Joe’s natural mother was coming to visit the school to see Joe compete in the Cross-country races we hold each year. There had been an incident the previous Saturday where Joe spent the day with his mother, and then had to be forcibly removed by DOCS as he would not get out of his mother’s car.

We, at the school, were on high alert, and even considered having DOCS or the police standing by in case the mother tried to manipulate Joe as we were all told was her “sick” way of treating him.

Well, Leilani showed up as planned, and we were in for a real surprise. Far from being the manipulative witch we’d all imagined, she was a quiet, soft-spoken gentle woman who was very candid about herself: that she herself was struggling with bi-polar disorder, that they were in government housing, that she really was at her wits end with Joe (he had broken one of her ribs, pulled a knife on her and attacked his younger brother with a knife), that she was heartbroken at what had become of her family, that she felt deeply disrespected by her sister and that she was frightened of what might happen to Joe, yet thrilled that he was learning to read and write. She was quite “on board” with everything we explained about Joe, and when she related her side of the story, much that had been tragic became more so.

For example: Ingrid and her husband had based their accusation of Joe’s abuse on sudden changes of mood and attitude; night terrors, repetitive behaviours and fixations (such as washing his backside), and sudden inexplicable violence and tantrums. Those were all things that could be explained by molestation, true – but they are also things common to ASD sufferers. There had never been a single allegation of abuse before that, but now Joe’s mother must stand trial next month for abuse; and Ingrid, by her own admission, has no experience with ASD.

We began to realize that Joe’s behaviour deteriorated each time he spoke to his mother because he missed her so much and wanted to go home, not because she was manipulating him. We saw that Joe quite liked the attention that he got when people thought he was being victimized, and so we believe he began to play it out for his own advantage – hence the allegations of sexual abuse. We have since heard that neither the police nor DOCS has any credible evidence to back up the allegations, and in talking candidly to Joe– well, he’s hasn’t got any details either. Just a smug and disturbing smile….

Many other allegations took on a different light when Leilani weighed in with her side, and we began to see just how utterly tragic this situation was. We saw a Leilani’s side: low-income family with a history of mental illness, struggling with a child they couldn’t cope with; who were forced to involve DOCS because they could not afford the treatment and intervention Joe would need, to their enormous detriment.

We saw the well-off (but also bi-polar) sister try to do what was right by her family, and apparently mis-interpret Joe’s situation to the point where she filed child-abuse charges against her own, struggling, sister.

We saw the parents of the two daughters, torn between them, trying to do right by both and at once cope with a child that no-one could control.

We saw a child protection agency make an already bad situation worse.

And we saw a child with an untreated mental illness play both sides against the middle.

How do you pray into that situation??

Anyway, I thank you so much for getting this far. I would be deeply appreciative of any suggestions and insights that you might have in terms of how you care pastorally for an pray for a family in this kind of crisis, and how – if it is possible – you discern if there is more going on spiritually than meets the eye….

Thank you and God bless

A