Having children with autism leads to violence among some parents

From The Denver Post Dec. 2:

Jacob Grabe, 13, could sense a storm coming several days out. He would get agitated and make strange noises. Silverware bothered him. He could eat only from plastic forks and spoons. He breezed through complicated algebra but struggled with basic division.

Nearly three months ago, when his father, Allen, (pictured) allegedly shot and killed him while he was sleeping, Jacob had been exhibiting these and many other symptoms of the mysterious disorder autism for most of his short life.

He had great difficulty making friends. He had trouble controlling outbursts. He had been shuffled from school to school. He had, in recent years, made some improvements with medications. But there is no cure for autism.

Friends of the family say Jacob's father feared his son would never be able to live a normal life. So Jacob became another statistic in a sad, pressure-cooker reality for families with autistic children.

Autism is a maddening disorder of scrambled brain development that can lead some parents to snap, experts say. Autistic children suffer abuse and are killed at higher rates than normal children. Studies have shown that about 20 percent of autistic children are abused, compared with about 1 percent of other children. Those who deal with the disorder place the abuse even higher.

"Our organization answers about 150 calls per month. We listen to the issues. As a result, I think there may be more," said Betty Lehman, director of the Autism Society of Colorado and the mother of an autistic son.

"It is so debilitating on entire families. For many families there comes a time when they can't take another minute of it," she said. "Even the most serene and loving parent in the world has a breaking point with this."

Autism can make normal family life impossible. Parents get little respite. Costs of therapy and medicines can be staggering. Colorado, with its Taxpayer's Bill of Rights budget limitations, is notorious as a state with few services for the disabled, the category autism is included in. One in 169 children here is diagnosed with the disorder. That adds up to more than 26,000.

Parents can easily spend $50,000 a year on speech, behavioral and sensory therapies, pediatricians, medications for anxiety and attention problems, and alternative treatments, including traditional Chinese medicine, massage and detoxification methods. Much of that is not covered by insurance or Medicaid.

Across Colorado, a shortage of doctors and therapists who specialize in autism means those who suffer with the disorder end up on waiting lists so long they are too old to benefit much when their number comes up. Many schools are ill-equipped to deal with autistic children because autism can be so disruptive in a classroom and there aren't enough teachers trained to deal with it.

No real answers to the cause of autism means no real cures. Parents say they simply try to muddle through treatments, oftentimes not in sync. There is an 85 percent divorce rate among parents of autistic children.

"Dads can be so isolated from getting any support or even understanding what is going on," said Carla Rickard, who has an autistic son. "They may not understand that the problem is not caused by the mom being too easy on the child."

Rickard said Jacob Grabe's death "hit way too close to home for a lot of us."

Rickard is part of a support group of mothers of autistic children that meets at a Grand Junction pizza parlor once a month. Before Jacob was killed, there may have been four members attending. At the last meeting, 14 women crammed around two tables and chatted for more than three hours about their special-needs children.

There are numerous such groups around the state, as well as online support networks. Jacob's mother, Jaquette, participated in some of those groups. Allen Grabe did not. Even though he is described as a good father who loved his son and never physically abused him before the murder, friends say he had trouble accepting that his son had a disability.

"He didn't understand it like she (Jaquette) did," said friend Debra Meeks. "And he didn't talk about the difficulty."

The symptoms of autism usually show up when a child is about a year and a half old and does not do normal baby things such as cooing, making eye contact or playing. As a child grows, the disorder becomes more pronounced. In the worst cases, the kids cannot speak or interact in any normal way. They can be aggressive. Often they are plagued with stomach and gross motor problems. Some are prone to injuring themselves. Many have above-average intelligence and some have savant powers.

In less-serious cases, labeled Asperger syndrome (the type Jacob was diagnosed with), victims can often speak normally and can take part in some normal interactions. But they don't sleep well. They have obsessions. They can't easily carry on normal conversations. They have difficulty making friends. And they have uncontrollable outbursts. Some of these children aren't diagnosed. They are simply termed "peculiar" or their parents are blamed for not controlling them.

"Sometimes when you think things are really good, they may not be. They can be so high functioning you can forget they have a problem," said Meeks, who spent a lot of time with Jacob.

Allen Grabe, 52, is still in jail following Jacob's death and is undergoing psychological evaluations. Little is known about what made him allegedly walk to a closet while his wife was on the telephone, remove a handgun, walk past her into his son's bedroom and shoot him in the head. He yelled at his wife, "I had to kill him because you were ruining him," before shooting him several more times, according to the arrest affidavit.

When police arrived, Allen Grabe was sitting on the front porch with the gun in his hand and blood splatters on his glasses and T-shirt. All he said was "I give up."

Friends were stunned. They speculate that Allen Grabe might suffer from undiagnosed Asperger himself. He was "peculiar." He stayed apart in crowds. He wanted to have everything in exact order. He took detailed notes of sermons during church.

It is not uncommon for one parent of a child with Asperger to also have the disorder to some degree.

Allen Grabe also had been under financial pressures with his window-washing business. Part of this was tied to the cost of treatments and medications for Jacob.

"Money is a huge issue in 90 percent of our families," said Penny Park, program director with the state autism society.

Jaquette Grabe has told friends she doesn't believe it was really her husband — a man who drove a pickup with an "I love my wife" bumper sticker — who shot their son that night.

"She said, 'The man who did that was not Allen. His eyes were different. His voice was different,' " recounted Pastor Bobby Clement, of the nondenominational A House for His Name church, where the Grabes worshiped.

Similar chilling stories of sudden parental breakdowns have played out in the U.S. in the past several years:

• A father in the Bronx repeatedly stabbed his 12-year-old son, and after killing him called police and calmly stated, "I've terminated the life of my autistic child."

• In McLean, Va., a former assistant secretary of commerce in the Bush administration shot his 12-year-old autistic son to death.

• Parents of a 19-year-old autistic youth set fire to their home in Albany, Ore., locked their son inside and left him to burn to death.

• A Tucson mother and her friend tied up and burned an autistic 5-year-old, then gave him an overdose of sleeping pills.

• A pathologist in Pekin, Ill., suffocated her 3-year-old daughter by placing a trash bag over her head. In court, asked whether she realized she was murdering her child, she answered, "No." Asked whom she thought she was killing, she answered, "Autism."

Even fiercely protective parents like the mothers gathered recently for their monthly support group can understand.

"It can be such an isolating disorder. Your child is viewed as rude, obnoxious and undisciplined. You are looked at as a bad parent," said Jill Frazier, who organized the support group in Grand Junction.

At their meetings, they talk of therapy sessions that cost $400 an hour, the benefits of wheat-free and dairy-free diets, husbands who haven't told coworkers they have autistic children, good teachers and bad teachers — and the future.

Few around the table say their children will be able to live normal lives as adults. The mothers say they exist day-by-day in the isolating bubble that autism creates, doing everything they possibly can for their children — and themselves.

"Jacob's death," Frazier said, "awoke parents to the fact that 'I also need to take care of myself.' "