Savage Spawn Read online

  High-risk kids need to receive intensive schooling in morality—consistent, structured, detailed lessons about ethics, honesty, and consideration for others, as well as finely tuned behavioral tutoring in specific methods of dealing with moral issues and puzzles. Children leaning toward criminality who also suffer from learning disabilities and hyperactivity—a substantial majority—will also require extensive academic coaching for the former and medication for the latter.

  Though I have dismissed psychotherapy as a primary treatment for psychopathy—an assertion no serious student of the subject would dispute—this does not imply that we should never talk to these kids about their problems nor allow them to express their feelings (appropriately). We must never forget that most of them have been conceived in chaos and raised with cruelty. Morality training will not work unless it is carried out in an atmosphere of genuine warmth and affection—first, because all kids need to be listened to and to be valued, and second, because one of the most effective ways of teaching is by example. If we want to turn high-risk kids into empathetic, caring human beings, they must be on the receiving end of empathy and caring.

  So counseling for behavioral manifestations of sadness and fear and loneliness does have a role in moral training. But in the case of violent kids, the first priority needs to be changing maladaptive patterns of behavior. Precocious violence sets up self-fulfilling prophecies of its own and is so obstructive and damaging in the way it blocks out appropriate emotions and positive behaviors that counseling is likely to be ineffective until the violence is eliminated.

  We need to get high-risk kids to a point where they can do good things. Only then can they earn rewards for being moral and generate a positive learning cycle that overpowers the learned-violence paradigm of their former lives.

  This comprehensive approach remains, sadly, an ideal. Removal of high-risk kids from rotten homes assumes that there’s somewhere to put them, and we are far from that situation. It is also predicated upon the availability of an army of experts to teach criminally inclined boys the explicit dimensions of moral behavior and nonviolent, nonexploitative methods of obtaining stimulation, as well as platoons of tutors and physicians working to remediate learning disabilities.

  But the talent and techniques do exist. What we need is the will and the courage to suggest and implement strong solutions. Would it be expensive? Not at all, given the savings, human and financial, that accrue when crime rates plummet and the energies of high-risk youngsters are redirected toward industry and away from interaction with the welfare and the criminal justice systems. Currently we are experiencing sharp drops in crime across the country. Some of the decrease can be attributed to more industrious policing and longer prison sentences of the “three strikes” variety. But a good chunk is also due to a factor we cannot control: demographics, namely, the fact that there are fewer males in the fifteen- to twenty-year-old age range. Population profiles change cyclically, so let’s not get too complacent. Eventually there will come a time when the proportion of violent youth rises sharply, and no policing or imprisoning will completely handle the tide of crimes they will commit. Wouldn’t it be smart to be prepared?

  Where will the money for group placement and moral training come from? Certainly no new taxes should be levied. That would be impolitic as well as unnecessary. Nor should funds be leeched by the Washington reflex to create commissions and committees. We don’t have to discuss the issue ad nauseam. We already know what needs to be done.

  For progress to be made, the romanticization of childhood to the point where it leads to head-in-the-sand denial about the brutal realities of abused children and the harsh realities of psychopathy needs to cease.

  Boys will be boys, but violent boys will be dangerous.

  Money should be transferred from dead-end research areas, such as media violence, into clinical programs for early identification and treatment of pathological childhood aggression.

  We need to stop paying for programs that are doomed to failure, such as a project I recently read about where high-school students were to be offered a three-week cable TV series that preached against the use of violence. First of all, by the time kids are in high school it’s too late. Second, three weeks of video indoctrination is unlikely to accomplish anything. Third, the measure of success used—filling out a questionnaire about aggression—has no relevance to real-life violence. And finally, targeting entire school bodies is preaching to the converted.

  Forget about global approaches that attempt to change entire ethnic groups or neighborhoods. They’re as sensible as giving chemotherapy to patients without cancer. It’s a lot smarter—and cheaper—to focus upon a very small but dangerous minority: the really scary kids.

  Even if there exists a small subsample of well-brought-up children for whom cold-bloodedness and subsequent psychopathy are totally inborn genetic traits, there is no reason to throw up our hands. Genetically linked behaviors, though they may be resistant to change, can be modified by the environment. Take the case of phenylketonuria (PKU), a metabolic disorder that once led inevitably to severe mental retardation. Now it is completely treatable with dietary manipulation. Two other triumphs of environmental tinkering with genetically mediated defects are so commonplace that we no longer give them a second thought: eyeglasses and orthodonture.

  This is not to say that fixing genetic psychopathy is as simple as straightening an overbite or clearing up a myopic haze. But changing the environment can alter genetic variables.

  I have worked personally with numerous children, such as retarded youngsters and those with genetic defects, whose severe behavioral problems were related to inborn factors but who responded extremely well to behavior therapy. One particularly fascinating case that I published in 1977 was the treatment of a seven-year-old boy with a condition known as 47XYY karyotype—possession of an extra male chromosome.

  First discovered in 1961, 47XYY was implicated in violent, aggressive, antisocial behavior when the trait was found to exist in a disproportionately high number of Scottish prison inmates. Several years later, an extremely notorious XYY surfaced—mass murderer Richard Speck—and criminal defense attorneys rushed to create a genetic apologia for violence. For a while the strategy worked, as some defendants were actually acquitted because of chromosomal abnormalities and others had their sentences reduced (71). Subsequent research showed the original Scottish tabulations to be flawed—based upon an incorrect frequency of 47XYY in the noncriminal population—and several other studies revealed no link between the extra male chromosome and criminality.

  Whatever the cause for the behavioral problems of the boy I saw—let’s call him Bobby—he was more than a handful and needed to be dealt with immediately.

  I treated Bobby in the same room where I’d attempted to connect with Tim. Barely seven, he was small, skinny, blond, and blue-eyed, was mildly retarded (IQ score of 79), displayed symptoms of hyperactivity despite treatment with Ritalin, and had unclear speech. Three mild but noticeable physical abnormalities were present: an extremely weak chin, shortened index fingers, and a small skull. Bobby’s parents were happily married, and he was their only child. At the time of his birth, Bobby’s mother was thirty-nine. His delivery had been normal. However, she had suffered three previous miscarriages.

  Bobby’s problem behaviors included defiance, refusal to feed himself and storing food in his cheeks, insomnia and interrupting his parents’ sleep, aggression against playmates, public masturbation, hitting and biting his parents, and tantrums so severe they included the hurling of furniture and other large objects. He’d shattered all the windows in the family home, and the panes had been replaced by panels of plastic. His pediatrician had prescribed the Ritalin for his hyperactivity, and though the drug had been partially effective, it had produced no carryover to other areas.

  Bobby’s physical problems were conspicuous, so the temptation to attribute his behavioral problems to organic, unmodifiable causes was strong, even though it was by n
o means clear that any of his difficulties were related to the extra chromosome (most XYYs are of normal intelligence).

  From the parents’ account during history taking, this kid sounded like a little monster. Yet when I met him, Bobby was pleasant, cooperative, and extremely responsive to praise. Furthermore, his behavior at the special school he attended was not reported to be troublesome. This led me to suspect that the ways his parents dealt with his behavior—notably, giving him attention when he was disruptive—might be a factor.

  Fortunately, Bobby’s parents were highly motivated and devoid of the ambivalence I’ve discussed previously. Their son’s behavior had driven them—almost literally—to their wits’ end.

  I developed rapport with Bobby quite easily using play therapy and was able to work with the entire family. The details of the treatment plan can be found in a previously published technical article, but the general approach was nothing revolutionary: helping the parents develop behavior goals and then showing them how to reward good behavior while ignoring and/or punishing bad behavior (72). They were quite successful at following through, and within weeks Bobby’s behavior had improved dramatically. Tantrums had decreased to a third of the previous rate, the destructive behavior had disappeared, and Bobby was sleeping through the night and feeding himself, though he continued to be a picky eater (probably related to appetite loss from the Ritalin). Furthermore, some behaviors we hadn’t yet targeted had also improved: Bobby was talking more, initiating conversations, and speaking in longer sentences. His speech was also clearer, and his father was amazed that he could now carry on a conversation with his son. This probably occurred because high-rate disruption can be thought of as “behavioral garbage,” hogging so much time that it often suppresses speech (73).

  Within weeks, Bobby’s parents were able to eliminate the evening dose of Ritalin and to go away on vacation by themselves, leaving Bobby with a baby-sitter. She reported the boy had been just fine.

  The one behavior that didn’t change early on was inappropriate masturbation. I showed the parents how to use a mild punishment technique called time-out (having Bobby sit in a corner for several minutes) each time he masturbated publicly. Within a month, this problem was reduced to 25 percent of its former frequency.

  A follow-up four months later showed stability in Bobby’s gains. Bobby was now sleeping so soundly that his mother sometimes had to wake him up in the morning.

  I am no miracle worker. The psychological literature is full of thousands of success stories accomplished by the systematic, humane application of behavioral principles to problem behaviors. I believe that if we catch antisocial kids early enough, they too will be amenable to behavioral treatment. We need to approach psychopathy with rational optimism and intellectual strength, confident in the knowledge that no society is more capable than ours and that we are doing the right thing.

  Andrew Golden, Mitchell Johnson, Kipland Kinkel, and others like them have wrought suffering beyond description. But if widespread revulsion at the horrors perpetrated by these young criminals leads us to correct choices, perhaps they have taught us valuable lessons without intending to.

  If we remain clearheaded, do what needs to be done, and are successful in preventing other tragedies, a bit of solace may yet be drawn from Jonesboro, Springfield, and so many other American killing fields.

  To my young patients, who taught me

  so much about the resilience of

  the human spirit

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