Opinion ID: 2556516
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Children's Neuropsychological Evaluation

Text: In an effort to aid its permanency planning, the Department engaged clinical neuropsychologist James E. Lewis to evaluate Ms. B. and the Children. In April 2009, Lewis interviewed the Children, who all graphically recalled episodes of violence and inappropriate behavior they had witnessed and the abuse they suffered while residing with Ms. B. and Mr. T. According to Jordan, Mr. T. would slap our mommy in the arm and face [and] punch her in the stomach and face, too. He hit our mommy so hard he knocked her down . . . I was scared and I'd hide under the bed. . . . Our dad would hit all of us with his hand or a big fat belt . . . he beat us on our butts and legs with the belt . . . if our mom tried to stop him, he'd hurt her, too . . . he'd drink a lot of beer out of these big cans and then get crazy . . . when he was acting crazy, he would be yelling and cussing and calling everybody names. . . sometimes the police came . . . I think they locked my daddy up once . . . I was glad because he was a bad boy all the time . . . I think he went to jail because he was such a bad boy to all of us. Davon recalled that Mr. T.'s beatings would leave big red marks [on the Children] and [that he would tell them] that [they] shouldn't tell at school what he did or he would beat [them] up worse. Lewis reported that Davon, Jordan, and Cedric all suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The troubles at home perhaps fell the most heavily on Shirley, who, at the age of eleven, had assumed the grossly inappropriate role of mothering her own mother and her younger siblings. Shirley explained that she would take care of [her] little brothers, like getting them dressed and trying to remind them about their lunches and their books to go to school[,] and that she would even take care of our mom[.] She also described being raped by her older brother, Dion, at her mother's house: [H]e'd have me back in this room but he'd have his hand over my mouth . . . he'd push his pee pee into my private area . . . other times, he'd touch my private area with his hand. I've had really bad dreams and nightmares about all of this . . . and I feel bad even saying what happened, because people think it was my mom's fault for not taking better care of us. Moreover, like her siblings, Shirley was a witness to and a victim of Mr. T.'s violence: [O]ur dad . . . hurt our mom really bad. . . he'd hit her with his fists and knock her down . . . I remember hearing that the police had come . . . I think they took him off to jail . . . but then our mom would let him come back again and hurt us all over again . . . including her. Following the interview, Lewis concluded that Shirley suffers from Depressive Disorder as well as a Severe and Unresolved PTSD.