Attachment therapy abuse cases

Location

Location

5 year old Vietnamese boy, adopted by Jessica Vitale-Elgie and William Elgie, died 10 hours after ingesting a detergent/bleach solution from a bucket soaking his recently soiled underclothes. CJ was developementally delayed and weighed 30lbs. Ms Vitale-Elgie admitted she was disciplining the boy and let him suffer for hours prior to taking him to the hospital.

The Elgie's had a 6 yr girl from Korea and twin infant bio sons at the time of CJ's death. Ms Elgie had sought various therapies including attachment therapy for CJ.

Vitale-Elgie pleaded guilty in December 2002 to negligent homicide but later withdrew the plea when faced with a state prison term. In 2004, she was convicted of misdemeanor child endangerment. William Elgie was never charged. Both he and his now ex-wife were ruled neglectful parents during Family Court proceedings.

At the time of the adoptive mother's conviction, she was on a paid leave from her job as a special-education teacher in the Buffalo (NY) school system.

Location

As a teenager, Jeannie Warren was under the treatment of Dr Robert Gross for more than a year. During that period, he beat her, threatened her and restrained her with “rage reduction therapy,” an early name for Attachment Therapy. Sessions lasted three to five hours; after a session, she would have swelling, purplish-red welt on her rib cage.

Warren’s early years were allegedly traumatic, including watching her biological mother shoot her father. She was hospitalized after she allegedly sexually abused one adoptive brother, went after another with a hatchet, and carved on her forehead.

She successfully sued and won a judgment against Dr. Gross.

Attachment Therapy

Location

11-year-old boy, one of 5 adopted by a couple from Colorado Springs, was forced to spend days and nights in a small room beneath stairs with only a wool blanket and bucket in which to relieve himself.  When he wasn't confined to that space, he was forced to masturbate in front of siblings, do calisthenics in the nude, wear a dog shock collar, and he was forced to eat his meals on the floor while the rest of the family dined at the table.

On good days, the adopted boy lived in a sparse basement day room, kept separate from the rest of the family.

According to the adoptive mother, she followed suggested therapies for his attachment disorder, such as employing reverse psychology and making him earn his meals and play time through good behavior.

She said one unlicensed therapist, Deborah Hage of Silverthorne, told her to put the boy in the space beneath the stairs when he was bad.

Hage wouldn't comment on the case and said she was "never the family therapist."

Prosecutors didn't seek felony convictions in this case because they could not prove the child suffered serious physical injury.

Attachment Therapy

Location

Location

7-year old boy adopted by Joseph and Heather Ciambrone Lucas was diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder by Foster Cline.

In addition to being forced to sleep in a bathroom stripped of towels, soap, toilet paper, and light bulbs;  he was fed through a bucket.  Lucas was thrown to the floor, kicked in the penis, punched, and had his head held under water.  He had been picked up by his ears in such a way, they were nearly pulled from his head.  According to the chief medical examiner,  the degree of injury to the head and nine different breaks or fractures to the ribs were indicative of child abuse, and could not have been caused by an accident, or been self-inflicted.  In addition, when the boy was admitted to the hospital, his body temperature was 84 degrees, suggesting the death blow came at least four hours before Heather and Joe Ciambrone drove him to the hospital.

Autopsy reports indicate at the time of death, the boy weighed only 32 pounds, with a height of only 41 inches.

Joseph Ciambrone - by his own admission - did nothing to keep the child from being kept naked in the bathroom of the family's Rubonia home and did nothing to alleviate the boy's malnutrition.

Attachment Therapy

Location

Attachment Therapy

Location

Sent by her adoptive mother to the Attachment Center at Evergreen (ACE), Andrea H. Swenson was put through the usual “two-week intensive,” but then diagnosed as so “damaged” that she had to stay on for periodic treatments at ACE, and live with AT-trained therapeutic foster parents (TFPs), at a cost to the family’s insurance company of $3,500 a week. Supposedly, Andrea made slow progress in the arrangement, until the insurance payments ran out. Whereupon, Watkins and the TFPs began pressuring the adoptive family to allow the TFPs to adopt her — and thereby get new insurance coverage. (Connell Watkins was clinical director at ACE)

One day in November 1990, Andrea returned to her foster home from school and reported to the TFPs that she had been sexually molested at school, which they regarded as typical “Attachment Disorder” behavior — false, manipulative, and attention-getting.

The next day, Andrea took an overdose of aspirin. She was in convulsions and delirious the next morning, but the TFPs did not attend her, and instead went bowling that afternoon. While they were gone, a relative visited the house and found Andrea dead in a hallway.

Attachment Therapy

Location

Four-year-old Cassandra adopted by Jennette and Richard Killpack died after they forced her to drink a gallon of water, which caused her brain to swell.

The Killpacks maintained it was a form of therapy to help Cassandra with her emotional problems that she had from being abused before they adopted her.

Attachment Therapy

Placement

Location

Location

Homestudy

Placement

Post placement

Location

Candace Elizabeth Newmaker (19 November 1989 — 18 April 2000) was a victim of child abuse, killed during a 70-minute treatment session supposedly to treat reactive attachment disorder. The form of diagnosis and the treatments used were unvalidated and non-mainstrean methods practised within the field of attachment therapy.

Attachment Therapy

Location