commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Just when you think the onslaught of child abuse stories cannot get any worse, along comes another one so awful that, at first blush, it would destroy one’s faith in humanity if one’s faith were not rock-solid. This case comes to us out of Maryland and — unlike what we usually see — is really more the story of teen and young adult abuse than abuse of younger children. An additional disturbing element to this story is the fact that the abuse was allegedly reported to the authorities three years ago but they reportedly chose to look the other way.
A Maryland couple kept their twin 22-year-old autistic sons locked at night in a dark, urine-(soaked) basement with almost no furniture for the last six years, authorities said.
Cops were at John and Janice Land’s Rockville home on Thursday for an unrelated matter when they found the twins locked in the basement. Police observed an “overwhelming smell of urine coming from the room,” according to court documents obtained by the Daily News.
The Lands, who are 57 and 59 years of age, respectively, told Montgomery County police that the reason they locked the room at night was because their sons had often left the house on their own, which the parents felt was dangerous. The parents reported that “the twins are nonverbal and can’t provide for themselves.”
“Janice stated that her sons have a history of eloping from the house and to combat that situation, she had locks installed on all the exterior doors preventing them from leaving the house,” according to the police.
The couple justified the lack of furniture in the basement prison by explaining that they had removed it because it had become soiled and that they would buy new furniture when they could.
There is little doubt that we humans have a great psychological need to handle our processes of elimination in a more-or-less cleanly way and that we find the inability to do so extremely demoralizing. A simple example of this is the fact that we tend to become quite upset when confronted with a stopped-up toilet and quickly seek either a handy plunger or, in extreme cases, that gift from god, the faithful plumber. Thus, to sleep in the urine-soaked basement room had to be very hard on the psyches of the 22-year-old boys.
In the basement, the authorities found a comforter, but no beds for the twins to sleep on. There were no smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, only a tiny basement window too small for either of them to slip through in case of an emergency.
“It’s shameful really,” neighbor Sam French told ABC. “That’s not parenting. I mean that’s just locking someone up for God’s sakes. That’s like being a jailer. Who would do that to their children?”
According to police, the Lands reportedly locked up their kids at 10 p.m. each night and kept them locked up till 4:45 a.m. This had been their regimen every night for the last six years. A neighbor said authorities were told about the deplorable conditions three years ago, but did nothing.
“Our son used to be friends with the Lands, and he told us there was a child locked in the basement that was autistic and never left the basement,” Sharon Drennan told ABC. “We made reports to the authorities and — nobody. There’s been cops in that house several times and never removed those children. And it comes to this — this long?”
“Supposedly, they’d lock them in the laundry room, and they would sleep on the washer and dryer and on the floor,” neighbor Bruce Dennan told the station.
The Lands were each charged with two counts of vulnerable adult abuse and attempted false imprisonment. Oddly, the city of Rockville has officially condemned their home.
“I’m happy that they (twin brothers) were found,” neighbor Natalie Larson told ABC. “I’m happy that they’re alive. I’m happy they can get the resources that they need to thrive. There’s a lot that they can do. Just because they have autism doesn’t mean they need to be locked in a basement.”
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It’s obvious that the Lands did not do a good job of handling the fact their children were autistic and apparently became increasingly hard to handle as they moved through mid-adolescence. I’m not in a huge rush to condemn them entirely, however, because I suspect they were bewildered and had no clear idea as to how to handle the situation.
Should they have gone to the authorities for help? Yes. Would the authorities have provided sufficient help? I don’t know. If the authorities had come up with a plan to help the two handicapped boys live a more normal life, would the Lands have complied, or would they have stubbornly told the powers-that-be to “bugger off”. Once again, I don’t know.
I would hope that Lori, our expert in cases of this sort, will advise us with respect to what the Lands should have done, and how effective it might have been.
I think it’s important to realize that the “modern approach” of trying to deal with handicapped children in a beneficent and loving manner runs counter to what had long been the traditional manner in dealing with problems of this sort.
This is perhaps not a perfect analogy, but I have a good friend I will call Ralph. Ralph told me that a few years ago, he discovered that he had a maternal aunt who had apparently exhibited signs of serious mental illness back around 1910. His poor aunt was taken to an asylum where she spent the rest of her natural life. Her existence was suppressed entirely and the younger family members would still not know she had ever existed had the family sleuth not discovered an old photograph of her taken before her incarceration began. The family sleuth then launched an investigation and put the pieces of this tragic puzzle together.
My point is that until fairly recently, the standard technique for dealing with handicapped and/or mentally ill family members was to hide them, in effect, make them vanish, even as they continued to live out their lives in severely reduced circumstances. The Lands’ strategy for dealing with their autistic twin sons would appear to have been in keeping with that approach.
I am in no way attempting to justify this approach; rather, I’m simply explaining that this was “standard procedure” in our society until things began to change around in the middle of the last century. Many members of our society today – and the Lands are apparently among them — have simply not caught up. Does this mean they should be imprisoned for a lengthy period of time? I’m not sure but I tend to think their punishment should be leavened with compassion and education in the event they are willing to listen to reason and change.