"The hidden secret that nobody wants to talk about."

[chanel]

Todd Henry's death in a Tyler classroom last September was a predictable horror story.

Cops and educators, judges and doctors, counselors and prison guards shuffled a throwaway kid named Byron through institution after institution – until he buried a butcher knife in the special education teacher's chest.

Even Henry saw it coming, saying weeks before he died that a kid in his class was going to kill someone. Describing the voices that told him to kill, Byron told a psychologist last month: "People already knew that something was going to happen like this."

Long before the classroom killing, state and local agencies exhaustively documented the 17-year-old's descent into madness and violence.

At 9, Byron tried to stab his brother. At 13, he brought a knife to school, fought without provocation and choked a child on a school bus. At 14, he chased his brother with a meat cleaver. Months later, he stabbed his younger sister in the back with a steak knife.

In a Texas Youth Commission juvenile prison, Byron repeatedly attacked guards and other inmates and was caught with razor shards in his cell. After his arrest on murder charges at 16, Byron taunted juvenile jail guards, saying he could kill them if he felt like it. This spring, he was caught pocketing a plastic knife in a mental hospital.

Yet bureaucrat after bureaucrat seemed bent on making a deranged child someone else's problem. Byron was pushed from school to treatment center to prison and back in a pattern that, on paper, looks like treatment by transfer.

"He hasn't just fallen through the cracks. The system keeps throwing him through the cracks," Huggler said. "Everything set up to prevent what happened to Mr. Henry was broken."

Experts say such disconnects are sadly common. The head of a Michigan juvenile agency recently told Congress that the problem of juvenile offenders getting little coordinated care until they commit horrific crimes is "the hidden secret that nobody wants to talk about."

Experts who reviewed Byron's history for The Dallas Morning News say the lack of consistency in his care and the absence of information sharing were like throwing gasoline on a fire.

The News examined 7,000 pages of Byron's records to understand what led to the killing. Byron's mother allowed access to files from schools, mental health clinics and hospitals, and juvenile agencies. Byron's family name isn't being used because he is still considered a juvenile in the court system.

His mother declined to be interviewed for this story.

The agency forms, memos and reports – a five-foot pile of paper that weighs 70 pounds – trace a descent into chaos.

Dangerous Texas teen shuffled from jail to clinics to class, and then a teacher was stabbed to death | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Texas Regional News

 

[strollingbones]

how does a society cope with the uncurable? with evil? should they just be destroyed like rabid dogs?

 

[chanel]

I don't know bones, but putting sociopaths in schools with other children sure ain't the way to go. Teachers are not psychiatrists or cops. And they are entrusted with keeping other people's kids safe.

The juvenile justice system is broken. The children's mental health system is broken. Families are broken. Dumping throwaway kids into classrooms is not the solution.

 

[Old Rocks]

This kid should have been in an institution. Something was very badly wrong, something that at present we have no way of fixing. Such people have to be removed from society for the protection of the members of society.

 

[syrenn]

This kid should have been in an institution. Something was very badly wrong, something that at present we have no way of fixing. Such people have to be removed from society for the protection of the members of society.

Absolutely!


Problem children should not be the burden of the public system. Parents at some point need to take responsibility for their children. Schools are not parents. Schools are not babysitters. Schools are not places to dump your children because you as a parent cant handle them.

Regular students should not be subjected to mentally ill or violent people.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

Spectacular and Tragic, capital "T" example of the system failing. Its going to take a lot of work to fix this one and chances are good that instead of fixing it people will point fingers and a few desk jockeys will be publicly flogged. But no actual policies or procedures will change.

Crud like this is why I decided not to into teaching high school many many years ago and went on to grad school. At the college level you don't deal with stuff like this.

 

[del]

Spectacular and Tragic, capital "T" example of the system failing. Its going to take a lot of work to fix this one and chances are good that instead of fixing it people will point fingers and a few desk jockeys will be publicly flogged. But no actual policies or procedures will change.

Crud like this is why I decided not to into teaching high school many many years ago and went on to grad school. At the college level you don't deal with stuff like this.

one assumes you're not on the faculty at virginia tech

 

[Dirk the Daring]

At the college level you don't deal with stuff like this.

Grad Student, Professer Fatally Shot at University - ABC News

Grad Student, Professer Fatally Shot at University

Virginia Tech massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Virginia Tech

 

[Dirk the Daring]

Spectacular and Tragic, capital "T" example of the system failing. Its going to take a lot of work to fix this one and chances are good that instead of fixing it people will point fingers and a few desk jockeys will be publicly flogged. But no actual policies or procedures will change.

Crud like this is why I decided not to into teaching high school many many years ago and went on to grad school. At the college level you don't deal with stuff like this.

one assumes you're not on the faculty at virginia tech

Oops, have to remember to read the entire thread before posting....

 

[hortysir]

Tragic.......

 

[Madeline]

This kid should have been in an institution. Something was very badly wrong, something that at present we have no way of fixing. Such people have to be removed from society for the protection of the members of society.

Absolutely!


Problem children should not be the burden of the public system. Parents at some point need to take responsibility for their children. Schools are not parents. Schools are not babysitters. Schools are not places to dump your children because you as a parent cant handle them.

Regular students should not be subjected to mentally ill or violent people.

Violent children are beyond the coping skills of most parents. A private home is not a secure setting and the neighbors may not as thrilled with this edict as you expect, syrenn. Or there may be other children in the same family.

We have a highly romanticized view of children in this country. No one wants to be the one who says "Enough. This kid is beyond saving and we want to be sure he doesn't hurt anyone else." Any first year psychology student can tell you that some personality disorders in children are incurable and can be deadly, but everyone in the system remains married to false beliefs such as every child's treatment plan must be geared towards reuniting him with his family.

The other tragedy in this story is that it sounds as if the murderer has paranoid schizophrenia. It might have been possible to restore him to function as an adult -- children respond differently to anti-pyschotic medicine and many are drug resistant. Fewer adults are. But very likely this 17 year old will never see freedom again, and will never get adequate care. Not after this.

All because the adults we pay to care for these kids are unable to deal with their jobs without the defense mechanism of a patently false belief that every child will eventually be okay.

 

[Old Rocks]

That assumption is based on the present belief that schizophrenia has a psychological basis rather than a physical one. There is some evidence to support the idea that schizophrenia has a physical basis, and if that is the case, perhaps the best we can do is blunt the symptoms with drugs.

 

[Madeline]

Old Rocks, there most likely are no "mental illnesses". Pathologists can dissect the brain of a person who had schizophrenia and see the changes in brain structure they never find in any other cadaver. Clearly, something physical happens to people who suffer delusions, etc. The body/brain barrier is not impenetrable -- the mind is affected by the body, and vise versa.

I would say that no physical illness has zero effect on the mood or thought processes of the patient, and no mood or thought disorder is without any underlying physical manifestations. I think one reason this false belief has been perpetuated among juvenile justice workers is that we want to believe that violent or deranged kidlets are the products of abusive parents -- even though we can clearly see that many abused kidlets are not violent or deranged.

Blaming the parents may comfort those of us lucky enough to have healthy kidlets, but it does nothing to protect us from the reality. Some kidlets are so defective in their minds they are unsafe to be around, and always will be.

 

[Old Rocks]

I would have to agree with most of your assessment. However, there are events in people's lives so traumatic as to change the way they react to certain situations. One of the fellows I work with was in some of the worst fighting in 'Nam. To this day, he will not willingly be anywhere near a fireworks event. The noise and lights bring back to many memories.

But for the serious illnesses, the evidence increasingly points toward physical basis. And that, of course, for the sake of those affected, is disheartening. Perhaps why it is taking time to be acted on. We always want bad things to be fixable. Sometimes, there is no fixing something, and when that something is a child, it is truly heartbreaking.

 

[antagon]

your're right 'rocks. this presents one of those scenarios where you dont know what to systemically change to prevent it from happening again.

i would say that fear of reprisal in tort drives a lot of the hard decisions, some which could save lives, from being even addressed. could this be behind the shrink's inaction, or the teacher or his superiors?

 

[bodecea]

Todd Henry's death in a Tyler classroom last September was a predictable horror story.

Cops and educators, judges and doctors, counselors and prison guards shuffled a throwaway kid named Byron through institution after institution – until he buried a butcher knife in the special education teacher's chest.

Even Henry saw it coming, saying weeks before he died that a kid in his class was going to kill someone. Describing the voices that told him to kill, Byron told a psychologist last month: "People already knew that something was going to happen like this."

Long before the classroom killing, state and local agencies exhaustively documented the 17-year-old's descent into madness and violence.

At 9, Byron tried to stab his brother. At 13, he brought a knife to school, fought without provocation and choked a child on a school bus. At 14, he chased his brother with a meat cleaver. Months later, he stabbed his younger sister in the back with a steak knife.

In a Texas Youth Commission juvenile prison, Byron repeatedly attacked guards and other inmates and was caught with razor shards in his cell. After his arrest on murder charges at 16, Byron taunted juvenile jail guards, saying he could kill them if he felt like it. This spring, he was caught pocketing a plastic knife in a mental hospital.

Yet bureaucrat after bureaucrat seemed bent on making a deranged child someone else's problem. Byron was pushed from school to treatment center to prison and back in a pattern that, on paper, looks like treatment by transfer.

"He hasn't just fallen through the cracks. The system keeps throwing him through the cracks," Huggler said. "Everything set up to prevent what happened to Mr. Henry was broken."

Experts say such disconnects are sadly common. The head of a Michigan juvenile agency recently told Congress that the problem of juvenile offenders getting little coordinated care until they commit horrific crimes is "the hidden secret that nobody wants to talk about."

Experts who reviewed Byron's history for The Dallas Morning News say the lack of consistency in his care and the absence of information sharing were like throwing gasoline on a fire.

The News examined 7,000 pages of Byron's records to understand what led to the killing. Byron's mother allowed access to files from schools, mental health clinics and hospitals, and juvenile agencies. Byron's family name isn't being used because he is still considered a juvenile in the court system.

His mother declined to be interviewed for this story.

The agency forms, memos and reports – a five-foot pile of paper that weighs 70 pounds – trace a descent into chaos.

Dangerous Texas teen shuffled from jail to clinics to class, and then a teacher was stabbed to death | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Texas Regional News

I know some teachers who have clarified to their friends and family that they have dangerous students and that if something happens to them, to make sure the school district is investigated for not protecting teachers enough.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

Spectacular and Tragic, capital "T" example of the system failing. Its going to take a lot of work to fix this one and chances are good that instead of fixing it people will point fingers and a few desk jockeys will be publicly flogged. But no actual policies or procedures will change.

Crud like this is why I decided not to into teaching high school many many years ago and went on to grad school. At the college level you don't deal with stuff like this.

one assumes you're not on the faculty at virginia tech

Its possible to get shot by a crazy person anywhere. These days even running a lemonade stand could get crazy. Grad school can be especially dangerous. Grad students crack all the time and do crazy stuff.

However, in college you are typically not dealing with students that have been shipped into your classroom because special needs programs, juvenile detention programs, or mental institutions couldn't deal with them. In the public schools, that just might happen.

 

[chanel]

It happens all the time. Teachers affectionately call them "ticking time bombs". In NJ, there is no expulsion, so there's no place else to send them unless the parents want them institutionalized. And here in S. Jersey, there is no detention center, so violent students are often "sentenced" to attend school. There is an alternative school where the staff is better trained in terms of restraint and what not, but even that placement needs parental approval.

Parents of good kids have no idea...

 

[random3434]

I did part of my student teaching at a "Mental Hospitall" for these kinds of kids. They were supervised and had to EARN coming to class ( I taught High School English to them, but it counted as special ed because of their ED label.)

If they had bad behavior they couldn't come to class and had to stay in their rooms, which to them was awful. They loved school.

They were on the meds they needed, in a supervised facility with doctors and trained staff. The sad thing is, there was a waiting list for other kids to get in.

And yes, it was run by the state.

 

[chanel]

Nothing like that here EZ. We have an outpatient counseling center that is overwhelmed with drug addicts mostly, but even teen sex offenders go to regular schools and attend "counseling" (if they can get a ride) And some of their victims are young.

Parents of good kids have no idea....

There is a wall of silence. That's why I was intrigued by the title.