Deadly Charm: The Story of a Deaf Serial Killer

10. 1961–1965: A Destructive Child

10 1961–1965: A Destructive Child The child is father to the man. Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up” Abuse generates the violent urge. Neurologic and psychiatric diseases of the brain damage the capacity to check that urge. J. H. Pincus, Base Instincts W hen Patrick was a year and a half old, his mother enrolled him in the nearby Tinker Bell Nursery, hoping that socialization with other children would improve his behavior and that his absence for a few hours a day would give her some relief. This choice was less than ideal—the nursery was a facility for children with normal hearing, and Patrick was the only prelingually deafened child in attendance. No one on the staff had the special training needed to work with him or to communicate with him in sign language. Patrick’s severe hyperactivity and violent tantrums made him extremely difficult for the nursery school staff to control. Even at this young age it was apparent that his size and strength far exceeded that of most children in his age group, 57 58 McCay Vernon and Marie Vernon and the possibility that he might hurt the other children was a constant concern. Because he could not hear well enough to understand what the teacher and other students were saying, much of the time, Patrick seemed to have no idea what was going on within the group or what was expected of him. This led to intense frustration for both Patrick and his caregivers. When instructed to sit in a chair, he would roam the room at will or throw himself on the floor in a screaming fit. Snack time was a disaster, as he willfully spilled his milk or threw his food on the floor. The other children in the nursery school quickly caught on that Patrick was “odd” or “different.” When he attempted to talk, his sounds were garbled, making it difficult or impossible for them to understand what he was trying to say, and they would imitate him derisively. Because Patrick was actually a bright child, he quickly became aware of his differences and the way he was perceived by other children. His response was to get his way and gain attention through misbehaving and intimidating the other children. His uncontrollable tantrums frequently disrupted group activities. Denied a particular toy, he would snatch what he wanted from another child then willfully break it. Told that he must lie quietly at naptime, he screamed and threw noisy tantrums that had the other children upset and crying. The nursery school staff soon realized that Patrick was more than they were equipped to handle. The school’s director advised Patrick’s mother that if he didn’t improve, she would have to remove him from the school, and suggested that June have him evaluated by a psychologist. The psychologist June McCullough consulted failed to recognize Patrick’s deafness and misdiagnosed him as mentally retarded. While it may seem shocking that such an error could occur with a child whose IQ was actually well above the median, this is frequently the result when young deaf children are evaluated by professionals inexperienced with Deadly Charm 59 deafness. This misdiagnosis was to have a profound impact on Patrick’s life. In a similar case, a five-year-old girl who was deaf was institutionalized for three years at Pacific State Hospital, a California institution for mentally challenged children. Although she was originally diagnosed as retarded, later evaluation using an intelligence test that did not require the use of language showed her to have an IQ of 121, a score that equals or exceeds that of 87 percent of the general population. After being removed from the institution and placed in a school for the deaf, the girl achieved great academic success, ultimately graduating from college with a master of fine arts degree. While most misdiagnoses of intelligence in children who are deaf do not have such extreme consequences—nor such positive outcomes —considerable academic, emotional, and social damage is often done to the child who is deaf when his or her intelligence is not properly assessed and adaptations are not made for the child’s deafness. As in Patrick’s case, not only does the youngster suffer, the entire family is profoundly affected, often in irreversible and damaging ways. At the time Patrick was first evaluated in the 1960s, little research had been devoted to deafness, and...