Early abuse, 28 homes for a child beyond repair

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Early abuse, 28 homes for a child beyond repair

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5721492,00.html

By By Sue Lindsay Rocky Mountain News
October 12, 2007
He was blond, with a shy, sweet smile, the kind of little boy they just
wanted to love.

Michael Tate was 6 years old when a Morrison couple chose him to be
their son.

But it didn't last long.

Tammy and Dave Wachtl had several successful visits with Michael at a
foster home. But within a week of coming to live with the Wachtls, the
couple relinquished the youngster. He would shriek like a wounded wild
animal and bash his head against the wall.

The string of doctors who treated Tate described him as the most
severely disturbed child they had ever seen.

His problems worsened as he became a teen. He tried to strangle himself,
drank poison, and jumped out a window during repeated suicide attempts.
At one point, he threatened to rape and kill a foster family.

Then, on Nov. 8, 2004, he wound up in the Fitzgerald family's garage.
What started out as a burglary turned deadly, after Tate and his friend,
Michael Fitzgerald, were confronted by Fitzgerald's father.

Steven Fitzgerald fought for his life, wildly swinging a scooter at the
two teens. The 41-year-old man died after being beaten with a shovel and
stabbed.

Both boys were charged with his murder. Tate faces a life sentence after
a jury last month convicted him of felony murder. Michael Fitzgerald
pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 72 years.

At the time of the killing, Fitzgerald, then 17, and Tate, 16, were
runaways from a Jefferson County social services facility.

In fact, Tate had spent nearly all of his life in the custody of
Jefferson County.

"He is the product of Jefferson County. They raised him and they
prosecuted him for murder," said his attorney, Shawna Geiger.

Social services in spotlight

Geiger, during Tate's trial, tried unsuccessfully to persuade jurors
Tate was not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

The evidence extended far beyond the circumstances of Fitzgerald's
death, with Geiger, at times, putting Jefferson County social services
in the defendant's seat. One psychiatrist after another took the stand,
revealing the dark and unpredictable world of a deeply troubled teen.

Geiger contends that social services failed Tate after he was taken, at
3, from his abusive mother.

In a letter written when Tate was 5, the boy's first therapist, Dena
Grossier, told his caseworker:

"I cannot stress strongly enough the need for ... Michael to be in a
stable, consistent, loving home on a permanent basis AS SOON AS POSSIBLE."

By the time Tate was 16, however, he had been moved 40 times into 28
different foster homes, social services facilities and psychiatric
hospitals.

"Social services is no place to raise a child," Geiger said.

Today's head of Jefferson County Human Services, Lynn Johnson, says
policies have changed since Tate came into the system in 1994. Now,
federal guidelines and state law require that children have a stable
home within a year.

But some professionals familiar with the Tate case say there was little
the system could do. They describe a child who was beyond repair by the
time he was a toddler.

Tate's case continues to haunt the two caseworkers who primarily managed
his care.

Adoption caseworker Alice Johnson left trembling and wiping tears away
after testifying.

"I think of him as a little boy still," she said. "I hate to see him so
hurt."

Caseworker Lana Holmes cried as she told jurors about seeing Tate
shortly after his adoption failed.

"Are you my mommy?" she recalled the 7-year-old saying.

Years later, she believes Tate should have been given something more
than social services was equipped to provide.

"He got the treatment that was available, but I would say he still fell
through the cracks," she said. "He needed more than he was getting."

Indications of abuse

The foundation for Tate's mental and behavioral problems was forged
during the first three years of his life, psychiatrists testified.

Tate and his older brother, Ronnie, had bruises and scars and described
physical abuse at the hands of their mother. Later, Tate's behavior
pointed to sexual abuse as well.

The boys were put into a foster home where they proved to be
unmanageable — defecating throughout the house, destroying furniture and
scratching the ivory off the piano keys, Holmes told jurors.

The boys were moved to a "therapeutic" foster home.

Eventually, a judge terminated the parental rights of their mother, a
substance abuser with her own mental health issues.

Tate, then 5, was now available for adoption, but Johnson said she knew
Tate would be a challenge the minute she saw him. He was hiding under a
table with his hands over his ears.

"He just struck me as being very, very alone and empty," she said.

That same year, Tate had his first psychiatric hospitalization because
he was biting himself, screaming uncontrollably in the grip of apparent
flashbacks, tearing his hair out and was "so emotionally distraught he
couldn't function," Johnson said.

After a month at a psychiatric hospital, he spent about eight months in
residential treatment, then moved into another therapeutic foster home.

"He could hold it together for a while," Johnson said, "but then he
would lose it."

'Unreachable state'

By the time Tate was 6, Johnson had decided that Tate and his brother
would have to be split up. Tate's brother went to a foster family where
he stayed for six years.

Tate's prospects remained slim. Then Johnson found the Wachtls.

The caseworker told Tate she had found him a "forever home." Tate was so
elated he ran smack into the plate glass sliding door of the Wachtls'
mountain home the first time he visited in July 1995.

"Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!" he called when he first saw them.

"His enthusiasm was overwhelming," Tammy Wachtl recalled. "He couldn't
get over that this was his new house, that these were his new dogs."

But to Johnson, the boy's exuberance seemed to be a warning sign. This
wasn't a true and healthy attachment — the kind that is made slowly,
over time.

"He didn't know these people, but he desperately wanted a family," she said.

Tammy Wachtl said she fell in love with the boy the moment she saw him.

"I was thinking emotionally there was such goodness within him. There
was just no way I could say no," she said. "He was so happy, so eager to
please, so lovable."

She quit her job to care for him, but soon learned it was more than a
full-time job.

"He would slip into this unreachable state," she said. "He would go into
fits until he had completely exhausted himself. We couldn't determine
what was causing them, so we couldn't prevent them or predict when they
would happen."

The first happened when a ball grazed his arm during a game of catch.

"It was like a wild animal had been shot, the sounds he made. I still
can hear it. It was horrible," she said, crying softly. "He just went on
with this sound until he literally had nothing left."

Episodes took place several times a day.

During the ride home from a McDonald's outing, Wachtl said, "Out of the
clear blue, he said, 'I saw you looking out of the corner of your eyes
at my shorts.'" He began viciously kicking the window of the car, trying
to get out.

At home, he banged his head, bit himself, kicked and flailed so hard
that he put a hole in the wall.

Ultimately, the caseworker advised that the Wachtls return him to the
county.

Wachtl called the decision "heartbreaking."

"He had so much to offer. He deserved so much. But it became very
evident that he needed more mental health care than we could provide.

"I was scared of the future," she said. "I knew my marriage would not
survive it. We would have to become missionaries to make this work.
Literally, this would be our life."

Johnson told Tate he hadn't been "behaving well," so he wouldn't be able
to live with the Wachtls.

Tammy Wachtl said she and Tate sat next to each other on the sofa,
crying. Tate, who had just turned 7, clung to her and sobbed.

Tate later told his guardian ad litem, "I blew it."

In retrospect, Tammy Wachtl wonders if things would have turned out
differently if she and her husband had been better prepared. They
underwent eight hours of training as adoptive parents, but felt helpless
when Tate went into his psychotic rages.

"The training we got was really generic, for dealing with a normal kid,"
she said. "I don't remember any specific tools that they gave me for
dealing with the problems that Michael had."

Diagnosed with PTSD

Tate next bounced between a therapeutic foster home, a residential
center and four visits to the psych ward at Children's Hospital.

He set fires and saw spiders. He accused families of abusing him and was
flooded with memories of sexual abuse, Johnson testified.

He referred to himself in the third person, telling his foster family,
"You'll have to ask Michael."

"It seemed like he was getting worse," Johnson said.

He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and put on
anti-psychotic drugs.

Johnson abandoned plans to place him for adoption and told him she
wouldn't be seeing him anymore.

The transition was devastating.

"Every child wants a family," said his foster care caseworker, Holmes.

She moved the boy to Devereux Cleo Wallace, a center that offered both
residential and psychiatric care.

He left the center at age 10, after staying three years. Holmes conceded
the time was too long, but she was worried he wouldn't be able to
function in a family setting. She gave counselors six months to prepare
him, then put him in a foster home for special-needs kids.

"It did not go well," Holmes recalled. Tate was destructive, urinated
all over the house and had screaming fits. Holmes tried to reunite Tate
with his brother, but that also failed.

Tate's life became a blur of residential treatment facilities, group
homes and hospitalizations.

He bit himself and banged his head as a "soothing mechanism." He began
to cut himself. He was gripped by hallucinations, screaming, "Mommy,
don't do that to me! Mommy, don't hurt me! ... Don't touch me! Don't
kill me!" He hoarded food and newspaper clips.

By his teen years, Tate had been given nearly every anti-psychotic,
anti-seizure, anti-anxiety, anti-depressant and other mood-altering drug
in existence.

He became institutionalized, unable to live outside the walls of a
structured environment.

At age 13, Holmes said, Tate didn't know how to tie his shoes. He had
never been around anyone using a microwave or a washing machine. Except
for a brief attempt at kindergarten, all of Tate's education took place
behind locked doors.

A final attempt to place him in a foster home in 2003, when he was 14,
ended abruptly after Tate threatened to rape and kill the foster family.
This happened after he told his religious foster father, "Satan is my lord."

Caseworkers were trying to find Tate a permanent home in a residential
center in Larkspur when he ran away from another center and hooked up
with Michael Fitzgerald. Within weeks, Steven Fitzgerald was murdered.

Steven Fitzgerald's widow declined to be interviewed for this story
about her husband's slaying or her son's troubles before his dad's death.

Tate, now 19, will be sentenced Nov. 2. Under Colorado law, he is
guaranteed a new institutional home: Prison.

The victim:

Steven Fitzgerald

Age: 41

Job: Colorado Department of Transportation

Family: Wife Kris, teenage daughter Jessica and son Michael, now serving
62 years in prison for his dad's death

What happened: He surprised his son, Michael, and Michael Tate as they
were burglarizing the Fitzgerald home. The younger Fitzgerald watched as
Tate stabbed and beat his father to death with a shovel. They had been
in the home a day earlier, coming on a Sunday when they knew the
devoutly religious Fitzgerald would be at church with the rest of his
family.





CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NSA / CIA
WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....

CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

Perpetrators of Maltreatment

Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.


CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...
 
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