Harlow Deacon was 15 months old and Emory Deacon was two years old when they were found starved to death.
A case of severe neglect has shown us the brutal truth of what consciously forgotten children can become.
Mere weeks prior to their deaths, authorities and social services had found them happy, “well-fed,” and in a clean home.
Others had felt in their gut that danger was impending, but lack of substantive evidence left those who could help without an actionable plan.
As a mother, this is undeniably difficult to read. I spread peanut butter on the boys’ waffles this morning, trying to give myself a break that I at least was buying peanut butter without added sugar. I washed blueberries I knew would go untouched and felt guilt that I still struggled to change their diets into dynamic, healthy, diverse, and nurturing palates that pediatricians advocate tirelessly for. Opening Miles’s lunch and seeing most of it remaining untouched, knowing his weight remains less than what we’d like to see, it is hard not to remember myself being on the bus in elementary school, boasting that I was ten pounds heavier than I really was. I had not quite hit fifty pounds, and without knowing explicitly why, I knew my thinness was something that always shocked people and could not be hidden.
I was told, for as long as I could remember, that I was ten weeks premature as an infant, and that while I ate like a tank, my mom body refused to gain weight. My thinness was always a mysterious non-event, something only puberty would be able to fix.
Having an autistic child always comes with well-intentioned advice from others who have only raised neurotypical children. Raising Finn has at least given me perspective on where this comes from. Getting Finn to eat is never a challenge. While it can be difficult to get him to understand that he does not need gummy bears for breakfast, he is a child who will happily sit down and eat a complete lunch, asking for more cheese (always) until he is satiated. Telling him that he can’t eat yogurt alone is not a challenge, as “safe foods” aren’t a battle we need to fight with him. The old adage “you eat what I give you or you don’t eat at all” would not be a lesson that ends with him going to bed hungry.
Having an autistic child is different in this regard. The belief that a child will not starve themselves and will simply eat broccoli is not the easy solution many infer it to be. Ask any pediatrician who specializes in autistic youth and they will probably concur that getting them to eat anything is the ultimate goal.
So, when a guest is over and they see me handing Miles his fourth yogurt for dinner, I would appreciate the side eyes to be averted. Having my child eat is, and will always be, the priority.
Last Saturday, at my sister’s apartment, in the middle of the night, Finn woke me for water. Light-headed from my idiopathic hypersomnia medication, in pain from my tooth extraction, and exhausted from it being whatever the time was, I immediately sat up and handed him the water next to the bed. He chugged the entire glass like an experienced fraternity member in a chugging contest and happily lay down to sleep right after.
I had a flashback to my youth, roughly seven years old, asking my own mother for water. It was evening, and time for us to prepare for bed. I remember being nervous to ask. I remember knowing that the answer would be “no” before speaking it—a punishment for still having issues with nocturnal enuresis. Being well past the age when this was normal, it was treated as an issue of laziness and active defiance. My throat was dry; the feeling of thirst was distracting enough to take my chances.
Naturally, my instinct that I would be told no was right.
As I cried, begging for one sip, I was mocked and told I would need to stop wetting the bed before I could drink water again an hour or so before bedtime. As the tears ran down my face, I threatened insubordination with the declaration that I would drink my own tears, using my own autonomy to ensure my thirst would be quenched. I knew while speaking this that it would never suffice—that it wasn’t realistic to expect I would ever get enough nourishment from tears alone to quench my thirst. I wanted my mom and her husband to know my desperation, to know that my thirst was severe enough that I would openly challenge their punishment.
Not only was I mocked then, but I was mocked years later, told in jest at thirty-six that I was always one for dramatics. The context of why I was refused water, why I was wetting the bed at an older age, and why I had been driven to tears were completely omitted. My reaction alone had been the source of taunting—the familiar running joke of my flair for unjust dramatics grounding a familiar theme in my life.
It is not only hard as a mother to read another story of children succumbing to the devastation of severe neglect.
It is not only hard as a human being to imagine the plight of children so young succumbing to circumstances that are as preventable as you can imagine—akin to using a crosswalk with the proper signal rather than recklessly stepping onto a highway in the fast lane. Knowing that if Harlow and Emory had simply been given food, even peanut butter on a waffle, they would still be here is heartbreaking, criminal, egregious, and beyond words. Their basic right to sustenance and love was foregone by the woman who gave them life, and they died as a result.
Another layer of difficulty from reading their story, and others like theirs, is the black bold letters that revealed to me our own dire circumstances in youth:
APT WAS REALLY CLEAN WHEN FIRST MOVED INTO APT BUT HAS DETERIORATED SINCE THEN, ESPECIALLY IN LAST 5 MONTHS. LOTS OF PARTYING, MOM IS USING CRANK. CHILDREN WEREN’T BEING FED, EXCEPT BY NEIGHBORS IN APT COMPLEX. ALWAYS UNSUPERVISED OR LEFT WITH THOSE COMING TO/FROM APT FOR PARTIES. CHILDREN HAVE BEGUN TO WET THEIR CLOTHING AND MOM LEAVES THEM IN WET CLOTHES WAS NOT A PROBLEM WHEN FIRST MOVED IN. MOTHER WOULD NOT CHANGE CLOTHES EVEN WHEN REMINDED. KIDS ARE ALWAYS FILTHY.
At five years and one month old, CPS had again come into our home because of reports of neglect.
Justifiably, reporters were redacted—anything not explicitly naming me was withheld. This particular concern was amidst a report in which a man had been investigated for sexually abusing me. Despite descriptions of no beds, not being fed, butcher knives decorating walls, and couches with exposed nails being nonconventional interior choices, my sisters and I remained. Records from the 1990s are incomplete, part of a foregone system that has since been well established with the millennium. The fifty pages of records I received at all were a small blessing, a whisper of reassurance that my dissociative amnesia and survival skills were not the result of my skilled tendencies for dramatics. I was, rather, a child survivor of severe neglect.
Being a victim of neglect is a challenging discourse with yourself about worth. To enable the narrative of gratitude, there is a carefully orchestrated theme of reminding you of rather simple ideologies that become pervasive throughout adolescence. One: there are many who do not have what you do—clothes, food (no matter its quality or lack of nourishment), water, the roof over your head (when that even exists), and siblings themselves are constant acknowledgments of privileges you need to remember to be grateful for. Requesting more or complaining about what you view as lacking is only proof of being unaware of how bad it could be. Two: life owes you nothing. No person owes you anything. If you have the fortune of being alive, that is what you need to be thankful for. There are countless children dying because they do not have access to the privileges you have. Remember that. Three: remember how much worse your caregiver had it. What they are offering you, no matter your perception of lacking, is more than they could have dreamed of. Complaining or feeling sorry for yourself is direct proof of how relatively easy you have it. Any friend who has more, any family that thrives on more stability, is the result of trust funds and debt. Being envious of the possessions of others, of family dynamics that are steadied with tenderness and love, is deception. The only life that is not allowed pity is your own.
The reality that living in multi-family housing saved our lives brings an incredible level of sadness when thinking of children like Harlow and Emory. At some point, there were neighbors who recognized our plight. There were strangers who decided we mattered in a way our own mother did not. There were brave souls who contacted help, who decided that our surroundings and lack of nourishment deserved attention from whomever could help.
I do not know the names of any of them.
I do not know where they are now, what sadness has ailed them, what triumphs they’ve received, or if they are even alive today. I do not know their names, or if they remember the little girls they graciously ensured would be fed.
I wish I did.
I wish I could thank them.
I wish I could tell them that we’re okay.
That while we are unpacking, processing, and healing, they are not only heroes… they are the very reason we are still here. They ensured our survival. The human beings that saved our lives are nameless, faceless, and anonymous. Wherever they are, whatever they are doing, the community that surrounded us cared enough to offer resources that came from their own work and pocket. While we were taught we were owed nothing, they showed us we deserved life.
I wish I could thank them.
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