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CURTIS KRUEGERBut frustrated parents are having their uncontrollable kids arrested in hopes of finding them help they need.
Diana Matthews pressed charges against her 17-year-old son after he shoved her. She hoped he would get mental health and drug counseling.
Instead, Daniel Matthews was killed in a fight two weeks ago inside Pinellas County's Juvenile Detention Center. He was the first youth killed in the center.
Yet his story is not uncommon.
More parents are trying to help their troubled children by having them arrested and charged with a crime.
"I call it an epidemic," said Cathy Corry of Clearwater, who runs the Web site www.justice4kids.org "It's these parents' attempt to save their children from themselves and to protect society from them."
The trend is troubling even to Florida Juvenile Justice Secretary Bill Bankhead.
"I don't think it is a good idea for folks to have kids arrested with the idea in mind that that's the only way that they're going to get mental health services," he said.
The problem, experts say, is that police are not counselors, and the detention center is not a mental hospital. They say it's better to find counseling or residential mental health treatment for children before putting them in handcuffs.
"Parents need to recognize that rather than looking to the juvenile justice system as being their end-all resource, there are other resources," said Pinellas-Pasco Executive Assistant Public Defender Judy Estren.
Finding the right form of help can be difficult. "A lot of times they get referred from one location to the next to the next," she said.
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Frank Quesada said he hears this story often in the Unified Family Court, which deals with juvenile crime, abuse, neglect, divorce and other family law matters.
Some parents repeatedly call police about relatively minor problems with their kids. Some get so confused that they seem to think "it is for some reason the state's obligation to raise their children." He also sees parents truly struggling with difficult children. These parents call police only in desperation, worried their kids will hurt their brothers, sisters or even grown family members.
"Your heart goes out to them," he said.
Quesada described one mother and sister who took turns staying up late at night to make sure a 10-year-old didn't follow through with threats to burn down the house.
Some of these families come before him because "we have little or no mental health resources for our children, and every time I turn around they're being cut."
Most families will never have to deal with having a child arrested.
But Tom and Tinaya House of Oldsmar said their 16-year-old son's behavior has left them groping for answers.
Steven, they say, can be lovable, and they stress how much they do love him. But he frequently threatens and hits others in the house, and once picked up a knife next to his birthday cake and threw it, narrowly missing Mrs. House, she said. It stuck in the wall.
The Houses have called police about Steven. So have school officials. After the knife just missed her, Mrs. House thought, "Oh my God forgive me, because I've got to call."
Steven has been diagnosed with various psychiatric disorders and frontal lobe epilepsy which, according to a neurologist's report about him, can "often cause severe behavioral problems."
A psychologist's evaluation last October said residential treatment had been recommended for him. But the evaluation said that was not a possibility because Steven did not have Medicaid, and the family could not afford the treatment.
Tom House is an insurance sales manager, and the family lives in a comfortable three-bedroom home with a swimming pool. But a residential neurology center they looked into cost $500 a day - financially out of reach.
Other suggestions for treating Steven at home frustrated the Houses. The plans "do not keep their other children safe and ignore Steven's escalating behavior. Due to their frustration with the health care system, they are turning to the juvenile justice system for assistance," the psychologist's report said.
Tinaya House said a probation officer and others in the system actively encouraged them to call police about Steven, saying it was the only way to get help.
He has been charged at least five times with battery, from incidents at school and at home. But during a stay at the JDC in December, the Houses say, Steven was restrained by a detention officer. He had been shouting abusive comments at officers, and eventually hit one in the eye.
When he was released, he had scratches on his face and a broken shoulder. An abuse report called in against the officer was inconclusive. One doctor interviewed in the case considered the broken shoulder to be recent, but one did not.
The Houses recognize that Steven is a challenge to control, but they think the officers used excessive force and hurt Steven unnecessarily. They don't want Steven back in the JDC.
Now, they wonder how to get proper care for Steven while providing a safe home for their other three sons.
"We live in constant turmoil," Tinaya House said. "There is a great deal of hostility, friction and opposition among family members every time an incident occurs ... Steven needs constant supervision and attention. With our family's strength and our hope and our faith, we're able to continue day by day."
Asked about the incident at the JDC, Juvenile Justice spokeswoman Catherine Arnold said she was not familiar with it but stressed that "our detention officers for the Department of Juvenile Justice undergo a rigorous training process ... part of the certification process includes use of methods that help de-escalate potentially explosive situations," as well as appropriate restraints.
Bankhead said the Department of Juvenile Justice has greatly increased the mental health services it provides to youths detained in its facilities.
But it's much better to find help for youths at an early stage, said Chris Card, executive director of Hillsborough Kids Inc., which handles foster care and adoptions for the Department of Children and Families.
For many parents, "they're saying, "Can you take my child, can you take my child, can you take my child, I can't live with them anymore,"' Card said.
But it's difficult, he said, to find residential treatment for children unless they have certain diagnoses, or they have been abused, or they have been moved into the juvenile justice system.
Or their parents have money for private care.