Salem, MA–We wrote last week about the case of 8-year-old Jeremy Fraser, whose mother Kristin LaBrie made international news after being charged with child endangerment for stopping the boy’s life-saving cancer treatment while she had primary custody. To read more, click here.
We have since spoken at length with father Eric Fraser, who now has custody and who is preparing for Jeremy’s likely death from leukemia. According to the doctors, Jeremy”s illness was curable until his mother allegedly delayed and obstructed his chemotherapy. Meanwhile, Eric was allegedly kept at arm”s length by Kristin”s accusations, aggressiveness and conflict-seeking behavior. Now it is too late: Jeremy”s outlook is near-hopeless.
The bottom line for me is that this child”s life would probably have been saved if Massachusetts had a shared parenting law.
Troubled parents are a fact of life. That”s where shared parenting comes in. When parents are less than perfect — which is most of the time – shared parenting allows each parent to be the child”s safeguard against failure by the other parent. By ordering sole custody to one parent in most cases, and giving the non-custodial parent only a few days per month with the child, the courts remove the child”s best protection against failure of the custodial parent – the other parent.
Jeremy”s plight is not at all unusual. The rates of child abuse and neglect are astronomical in single-parent households. The rates for single mothers, their boyfriends and their second husbands significantly exceed those of biological fathers. Many of these children would be protected if their biological dads were allowed more access to their children so they could monitor how their children were being treated.
The overall picture, based on our lengthy conversation with Fraser, is of the family court and the Department of Social Services (DSS — Massachusetts” child protective agency) ignoring mountains of evidence of an unstable mother. This was so extreme that DSS and the courts switched custody of Karin LaBrie”s older son to his father (not Fraser) in 2000. So her parenting limitations were well known by the time of her subsequent divorce from Fraser. Yet she was awarded sole custody of Jeremy, with subsequent tragic results.
Fraser too is not without fault. This is exactly the kind of situation in which children most need shared parenting – so that each imperfect parent can keep an eye on the other.
Fraser claimed numerous instances of LaBrie’s unstable behavior stretching from 2000 to their 2002 separation, the 2005 divorce, and to the present, many of which can be verified by court, police, and agency records. These allegedly included “endless” threats by LaBrie and LaBrie”s boyfriend to harm Eric Fraser, his family and new partner; physical confrontations; several domestic violence incidents between LaBrie and her boyfriend; drunken rages; scrapes with her landlord, and sustained efforts at parental alienation. At one point, Fraser’s elderly parents were forced to get a restraining order against the boyfriend.
In 2000, police were allegedly called to the couple’s home and were said to find LaBrie drunk and unable to care for baby Jeremy and the older son from LaBrie”s previous relationship. That is when the older boy was put in the custody of the first father. DSS investigated LaBrie twice in 2006 and investigated Fraser once in 2005 – the latter a case Fraser says he initiated when he observed bruises on his son. All of the investigations were closed without a finding. Fraser made several impassioned pleas for court intervention that were not answered.
The Eric Fraser we heard describes himself as a hardworking dad with 19 years of employment by UPS who went to great lengths to maintain the peace for the benefit of Jeremy. At times when relations got particularly rough, he withdrew from contact with Kristin and his son, feeling he had run out of options for keeping the peace, and holding no faith that the courts would intercede fairly – a common refrain from non-custodial fathers.
Massachusetts needs a shared parenting law to prevent this kind of tragedy. Let”s call it “Jeremy”s Law.’
Let us know what you think.