Plenty of Blame to Go Around for Boy’s Suicide

MERIDEN, Conn. —  No one knows what happened that January night when 12-year-old Joseph Daniel Scruggs tied one end of a dark blue tie around a bar in his closet and the other end around his neck.

Daniel and his 17-year-old half-sister, Kara, had been up late, watching a movie and eating spaghetti. Their mother, Judy, a teacher’s aide in Daniel’s school who also worked part-time at Wal-Mart, had gone to bed early.

One of Judy Scruggs’ many regrets is that she didn’t check on Daniel when she heard a banging from his room that night. She didn’t check on him in the morning either, assuming that he was asleep in the large closet -- his “fort” -- where he often slept.

It wasn’t until she got home that afternoon that she asked Kara to get her brother.

She can still see her son, neck bent, palms blue, the life choked out of him by the tie that she gave him for Christmas.

*

After more than two years, Scruggs remains bewildered by the world’s determination to judge her.

“What have I done,” she asked, “except be a mother?”

But prosecutors say that she wasn’t a good enough mother, that she reared her children in a home that was cluttered, unsanitary and unsafe. They say that is one reason Daniel, who was mercilessly tormented by bullies at school, took his own life on Jan. 2, 2002 -- the day before classes were to resume after the holidays.

Daniel himself left no note, no explanation.

In an extraordinary move, police arrested the single mother nearly four months after Daniel died. Although his death was ruled a suicide, Scruggs, then 50, was charged with risk of injury to a minor.

“They might as well have charged me with murder,” she said.

But prosecutors argue that the conditions in which Daniel lived in the three-bedroom apartment, where clothes and clutter filled the rooms and a putrid smell filled the air, amounted to criminal neglect.

“This was not about Daniel’s death, but about the horrific way he lived,” Det. Gary Brandl said.

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For months after his death, Daniel’s sweet smile seemed everywhere -- radiating from newspapers and television news.

So was the story of his bullying.

Students at Washington Middle School came forward with tales of how the 63-pound seventh-grader had been a walking target, picked on almost daily. He had been shoved into desks. His things had been stolen. Once, his head had been pulled back so far that his neck nearly snapped.

Daniel wore mismatched clothes -- camouflage pants and a plaid shirt -- and often wore the same clothes for days. Sometimes, when he was jeered, he lashed back, only to be suspended for fighting. More often, he fled in tears.

Although he had an IQ of 139, Daniel sometimes babbled in baby talk. His breath smelled. He soiled himself in class. Other students nicknamed him “stinky.” One teacher later told investigators that she held her nose whenever she passed him.

There were indications that Daniel had attention deficit disorder and that he was depressed.

Yet for all the signs of a child in crisis, no one intervened other than to document that Daniel was troubled -- not teachers, not the guidance counselor, not the police officer stationed at the sprawling urban school.

In fact, a damning report by the state child advocate’s office would later suggest that when Daniel skipped school for weeks at a time, no one seemed to care.

It was easier not to deal with Daniel Scruggs. It was easier to look the other way.

*

After his death, the child advocate’s office launched an investigation. Parents formed an anti-bullying organization. The Legislature passed anti-bullying laws.

There was so much guilt and so much blame -- and a question no one could answer. What drove the boy to take his life?

The school blamed Daniel, saying he was a bright child who brought his trouble on himself.

The mother blamed the school, saying it should have protected her son from bullies. She hired a lawyer last month and filed suit.

Police blamed the mother, saying living conditions in the home were “appalling and unsafe,” with “piles of debris, clothing, junk and other clutter.”

Brandl, the detective, said the evidence amounted to more than clutter. Daniel had used his mother’s credit card to access Internet pornography. Kitchen knives were found near the boy’s body. And years ago, when Daniel was a baby in Virginia, the state had briefly investigated allegations of neglect.

“This isn’t about bullying,” Brandl said. “This was a straightforward case of neglect.”

But even he acknowledged that others should have helped Daniel.

Why, Scruggs asks, is she the one labeled a criminal?

*

Judy Scruggs is a small, rumpled woman with short blond hair and eyes swollen from tears. “I’m not the best housekeeper,” she said. “But I loved Daniel and he loved me, and nobody can judge me on that.”

But many have judged Scruggs: the media, the schools, her own family.

After Daniel’s death, her 26-year-old son went public with his anger against the mother he felt had abandoned him, leaving him and his two older sisters to be reared by grandparents.

Scruggs says she tried to be a better mother to her younger children, especially Daniel, whose father abandoned the family when his son was an infant.

At home, Scruggs described a happy child, always rustling up concoctions for dinner or curling up in his closet with Harry Potter books.

At school, she knew that he was picked on by one student in particular, a boy she once disciplined. But when Scruggs rebuked the boy, Daniel became furious.

“Mom!” he cried. “You’ve only made things worse.”

*

Daniel’s life was on a downward spiral long before the night he ended it.

His grandparents died within a few months of each other at the end of 2000. Kara, then 16, suffered a miscarriage. Daniel, struggling in middle school, seems to have become lost in the family’s troubles.

The sweet, gifted child described by elementary school teachers disappeared. By the fall of 2001, Daniel stopped doing homework. His mother could no longer get him to bathe.

At home, he spent more and more time in his closet. At school, he spent more and more time in fights.

Once, after a friend told her that Daniel’s life had been threatened, Kara confronted her brother.

“Is anyone messing with you?” she asked. “ ‘Cause I’ll come in and beat them up.”

“No!” Daniel cried. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”

*

A few tried to help Daniel: the drama teacher who gave him a part in “Fiddler on the Roof,” the Cub Scout leader who took him camping. But for the most part, professionals who could have intervened -- including teachers and social workers -- did little other than document Daniel’s problems and hand Scruggs lists of community services.

The school did transfer him to a class for disturbed children two months before he died. And school officials and a guidance counselor talked to Daniel himself.

He told everyone the same thing: He was afraid to go to school.

“What could I do?” his mother asked. “Carry him?”

On Dec. 4, 2001, she met with school officials to complain about the “verbal and physical intimidation,” saying it was the reason for his truancy. According to the minutes, officials concluded that Daniel “had initiated many of the incidents by passive-aggressive behavior.”

By Christmas, Daniel had missed 45 of 78 school days.

Later, it was easy to blame Scruggs for not being more assertive, for not being a better parent. Too easy, said Connecticut child advocate Jeanne Milstein.

“When a parent is unable or unwilling to take care of a child,” she said, “the law has established a safety system for that child, people mandated to report to the appropriate authorities if they see a child in trouble.”

“That safety system failed Daniel at every level,” Milstein said.

A year after Daniel’s death, Milstein’s office issued a 41-page report that described that failure in chilling detail:

“The child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, the educational system, and his family all failed to see the symptoms of physical and mental illness

“Many of the [school] professionals interviewed intimated a level of acceptance for the way Daniel was treated. Their statements implied that ... he was bringing it on himself through his own antisocial actions.”

The report doesn’t gloss over the mother’s responsibility. But it reserves ultimate condemnation for the school staff and a social worker who visited Daniel at home on Dec. 4, 2001, in response to a guidance counselor’s October call.

“The children have proper space and bedding and there is adequate food in the house,” the social worker reported, adding that Daniel’s problem was one of “educational neglect” that should be handled by the school.

The department closed the case Dec. 27.

Six days later, Daniel hanged himself.

“No one took responsibility for the child’s death,” Milstein said. “Everyone was responsible.”

*

The state Department of Children and Families acknowledged that it could have handled the case better and has promised to improve social workers’ training. School officials have refused to comment.

So has prosecutor James Dinnan, who, for two weeks last fall, tried to persuade a jury that the mother’s neglect contributed to her son’s death.

“A cluttered home is not a crime,” Scruggs’ lawyer, M. H. “Reese” Norris, told the court, arguing that the bullies who tormented Daniel and the teachers who failed him were the cruel and neglectful ones.

The five men and one woman on the jury said it was police photographs of three kitchen knives near Daniel’s body that convinced them. They acquitted Scruggs of all but one of the charges, but convicted her of one count of risk of injury. Norris has filed an appeal.

“We’ll fight this,” Norris assured Scruggs. “It’s not over yet.”

But Scruggs isn’t so sure. She has lost her son. She lost both her jobs. And she faces a possible prison term of up to 10 years.

It will never be over, she thought, as she pushed her way through the media mob outside the court.

In her mind, Scruggs can still hear Kara’s scream.