When Ivy and Rodney Kiddle of Raymond, Alta., 15 miles southeast of Lethbridge, which her son "Randy" (not his real name) 20 years old, he was a round, happy, 14-month-old whirlwind of energy. "We knew that his own mother and father were chronic alcoholics, but there was no knowledge of fetal alcohol syndrome," says Mr Kiddle. As with most of these children who have problems with puberty Struckmann overnight."He was a beautiful child," recalls Mrs Kiddle. "He had a few problems, but everybody loved him. Then on a Sunday morning when he was 13 he stood up and said:" I will be a devil worshiper and the Baddest person I can be. "By the time we have in the church I was a nervous wreck. He tried to jump out of the van, he pushed, punched and hit, which he never before, I thought he was something. He is never again. "
Randy went from the "protector of the little guy" to a bully. He started in drugs, alcohol, and with his temperament and quick disreputable acquaintances, a lot of trouble. At the age of 19 years, he was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). Now 21, Randy is with his seventh attack free. Earlier this year in an effort to provide some protection and stability, Kiddles a deposit on a small house for him and his 33-year-old girlfriend, with the expectation that he would pay the mortgage with its Assured Income for the Severely grant . This plan was not to last, either. "He is very brilliant in many areas, it is known, it may be all snow, but he can not see past his instant desires," Mr. Kiddle relates. "His problem is drug and alcohol abuse, but we can not stop him. The night he was [with violence] was their payday, his $ 818, he had $ 80 left. We have written off $ 6000, in which he for us another $ 2600 for the down payment. I'm just really burnt. I have no money left. We should have a public guardian for him, but by the time he was diagnosed with FAS, he was already an adult. "
Mrs Kiddle adds: "He has a girlfriend, but the marriage would be an absolute disaster. They are so sexually active if they have children ever, oh my goodness. I have pairs of girls, the sexual is horrendous. They want instant satisfaction and sex is to them. A couple gets a girl a shot every three months, it may not be pregnant, but when we tried with our son, we will take his or her individual rights. We want a miracle. I'm 70 years old, and the Lord knows, we're still trying. But it is killing us. We need help. "
The Kiddles believe that a life-institutional agreement is the solution ", perhaps an apartment with shared meals and someone to check on them, three times a day as a senior citizen lodge." It would be cheaper than prison, but none of these facilities for adults and FAS joke at his end, Mr. Kiddle says: "I hope they send him. If he is in prison, we know where he is and be able to relax and not the everyday nuisances. But it is not all of it good. "
The Kiddles are not alone. Each year an estimated 4000 born Canadians are victims of FAS or fetal alcohol effects (FAE). Both the brain damage caused by their mothers during pregnancy to drink heavily. On 9 September, the ninth day of the ninth month at 9:09, bells around the world Tolled, alarming for the 60 million people worldwide, who are marginalized by the disease. In Canada, it is six times as often as AIDS, responsible for 50% of the prison cost taxpayers more than $ 2 million per person for special care and supervision during their lifetime, and is the leading cause of mental disability in the Western world is still totally avoided. Strange, but the disease is largely unknown to the average citizen. Although the Bell Tolled for these "invisible plague", organizers warn that with these increasingly gloomy statistics, the bells should be a wake-up call for everyone who loves children.
"Only a concern for the people today are living with fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effects, costs at least $ 600 billion, the approximate size of the national debt," claims International FAS Awareness Day co-founder, Torontonian Bonnie Buxton. "For FAS people within the judiciary, it costs us $ 5 billion a year. It is the biggest health problem in the country, and if we are to the taxpayers that we have against them, but people are not respected."
The cause for the phenomenon, she says, is that women drink more than before. "We want the world to remind you that during these nine months of pregnancy and during breast-feeding or planning to conceive, a woman should not consume alcohol." Like many adoptive parents, Ms. Buxton and her husband, Brian Philcox, eight unbearably frustrating years and tens of thousands of dollars to get a diagnosis on the many mysterious disfunctions, where their daughter, Colette, now 20th As Mrs Buxton in the March issue of Readers' Digest, they are finally a professional knowledge of FAS, only the diagnosis too late to big difference in their lives. Many of these parents are demanding change. Their work, combined with new research offers new hope for the future.
The national spotlight focused on the FAS this year, when a young man diagnosed with the condition was associated with kidnapping and first-degree murder. David Trott, 20, is accused of killing nine-year-old Jessica Russell, whose body was in a burned-out trailer in the vicinity of Mission, BC, on 5 May. Before the killing, Trott had psychiatric help but was told none was. During his hearing, he gazed vacantly around the courtroom and at the end of the process, asked his lawyer what he. He is now in a psychiatric evaluation to determine his mental competency to court, and his first meeting is scheduled for 15 January.
Diagnoses of FAS to change the judicial system in the U.S. In the first decision of its kind, a Tucson, Arizona, a judge commuted the death sentence of convicted murderer John Eastlack in 1997, based in part on Eastlack's FAS. Instead, he will the rest of his life in prison. "The judge asked me:" Why did it keep the child over and over again? "Psychologist Patricia Tanner Halverson said the Tucson Citizen." Parents ask me, "What is happening to my child?" The child has, the behavior of a person who had too much to drink. And they do not always have a chance to sober. "
Children with severe FAS are born full of alcohol in the womb. Teresa Kellerman of Tucson, co-founder of the Bell-Ringing FAS Day, says the day of its adoption of son John was born, his mother was Indian in a hospital in Denver, drunk. When he was born, the smell of alcohol filled the delivery room. "He was angry with alcohol," says Kellerman. "He was in the midst of her." Even if John, now 23, has never had a drink in his life, Ms. Kellerman says he has a cat that never leaves. "If he is not on his medication, it's just how drunk he part of the brain has been damaged, he has no impulse control, have not been convicted, he acts silly. But he is one of the fortunate ones, the response to drugs, after he takes it like it is just someone sober up. "
While John is physically mature at five meters high, he is emotionally immature. "At any time of day he could be anywhere from age two o'clock-23 o'clock," Mrs. Kellerman reports. "I call him my" boy-man. "He flirts inappropriately, I have the proximity to him, 24-7. If I were him take the dog for a walk around the block a while back, a neighbor, he rang the bell and started the inappropriate sexual comments. You understood, because She knows what John ... but not her husband. "knowledge, the possibility of sexual harassment charges, John spoke to his mother about his worries for the future. "He said:" I know that I could, without doing anything, which I do not, then I could go to jail. I know what happens in prison, and I think I would be better dead. "" Mrs. Kellerman, who has a Web site,
www.fasstar.com, notes that John's mental retardation is no protection from the prison and inmates. It concludes: "I just work around him from prison and from the morgue."
It is no coincidence that John and Randy Indian children are adopted, FAS / FAE has reached epidemic proportions among the Aboriginal population. 1987 an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal about a FAS prevalence is one of eight children in a small BC Indian community, while in some remote Alaskan villages, FAS was one of five births. In 1997, teachers in a school in northern Manitoba Ojibwa sought help when half of their students were incapable of learning. Researchers found an astonishing 30% of mothers admitted to drinking heavily during pregnancy. Ten percent of children diagnosed with FAS, and three to four times that many with FAE. In other words, almost half of the children on the reserve list will be brain-damaged by prenatal exposure to alcohol.
Nor is this unique reserve, medical geneticist and professor of pediatrics and child health at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Ab Chudley, managing the research. While stressing that the FAS problem is not race, but the social fact, "people are using alcohol to drown their problems," he believes that FAS, which are traditionally more likely than guilt "Culture Clash", is the reason, many Indian-white adoptions break. "If these young people suddenly go completely mad and uncontrollable, it is not cultural struggle, it is the result of prenatal alcohol exposure," Dr. Chudley says.
Kim Meawasige, a social worker with Native Child and Family Services in Toronto, agrees. "During my first five years at the forefront of street children, I began to see a pattern among the locals, with the adoption breakdown issues," she explains. "An estimated 65% of all children will be arrested because of alcoholism, and as we investigated, we began to recognize many of the children suffered from FAS. Many of them are in trouble with the law, and many were between 30 to 56 nursing homes in their Living with the blame always on hyperactivity, ADHD [hyperactive attention deficit disorder], or in a non-native, when the reality was they FAS. "
