The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog

by Bruce Perry

  Looking for any sign of remorse, I finally asked what should have been an easy question.

  “Now that you look back on all this, what would you have done differently?” I said, expecting him to at least mouth some platitudes about controlling his anger, about not harming people.

  He seemed to think for a minute, then responded, “I don’t know. Maybe throw away those boots?”

  “Throw away the boots?”

  “Yeah. It was the boot prints and the blood on the boots that got me.”

  MANY PSYCHIATRISTS WOULD have left the prison believing that Leon was the archetypal “bad seed,” a genetic freak of nature, a demonic child incapable of empathy. And there are genetic predispositions that appear to affect the brain’s systems involved in empathy. My research, however, has led me to believe that behavior as extreme as Leon’s is rare among people who have not suffered certain forms of early emotional and/or physical deprivation.

  Furthermore, if Leon had the genetic makeup that increased the risk of sociopathic behavior—if such genes even exist—his family history should have revealed other relatives, such as a parent, a grandparent, maybe an uncle, with similar, even if less extreme, problems. Perhaps a history of multiple arrests, for example. But there was none. Also, Leon had been turned in to the police by his own brother, a brother who seemed to be everything that Leon was not.

  Frank,* Leon’s brother, like his parents and other relatives, was gain-fully employed. He was a successful plumber, married, a dutiful father of two who was respected in the community. The day of the crime, he’d come home to find Leon, still wearing his blood-encrusted boots, watching TV in his living room. On the news was an urgent bulletin about the recent discovery of the violated bodies of two young girls in Leon’s building. Sneaking occasional glances at the boots, Frank waited until Leon left, then called the police to report his suspicions about his brother’s connection to the crime.

  Siblings share at least 50 percent of their genes. While Frank could have been genetically blessed with a far greater capacity for empathy than Leon, it was unlikely that this alone accounted for their very different temperaments and life paths. Yet as far as I knew, Leon and Frank had shared the same home and parents, so Leon’s environment didn’t appear to be a likely culprit either. I would only discover what I now believe to be at the root of Leon’s problems after I met with Frank and his parents, Maria* and Alan.* In our first meeting they were all in obvious distress over the situation.

  MARIA WAS SMALL and conservatively dressed, wearing a cardigan buttoned all the way up. She sat erect, knees together, with both hands on the handbag in her lap. Alan wore dark green work clothes; his name was sewn into a white oval over his pocket. Frank was wearing a button-down, collared blue shirt and khaki pants. Maria looked sad and fragile, Alan seemed ashamed and Frank seemed angry. I greeted each of them with a handshake and tried to establish eye contact.

  “I’m sorry we have to meet under these circumstances,” I said, carefully watching them. I wanted to see how they related to others, whether they showed an ability to empathize, whether there were any hints of pathological or odd behavior that might not have shown up in Leon’s medical records and family history. But they responded appropriately. They were distressed, guilty, concerned, everything you would expect from family members who’d discovered that one of their own had committed an unspeakable crime.

  “As you know, your son’s attorney has asked me to evaluate him for the sentencing phase of the trial. I’ve met with Leon now twice. I wanted to spend some time with you to get a better understanding of how he was when he was younger.” The parents listened, but neither would look me in the eye. Frank stared at me, however, defensive and protective of his parents. “We are all trying to understand why he did this,” I concluded. The parents looked at me and nodded; the father’s eyes filled with tears. Their grief filled the room; Frank finally looked away from me, blinking back tears of his own.

  I could see that these parents had spent hours wracked with sadness, confusion and guilt as they searched for the “why.” Why had their son done this? Why had he turned out this way? What did we do wrong? Are we bad parents? Was he born bad? They spoke with total bewilderment about Leon, telling me that they’d done their best, worked hard, given him what they could. They’d taken him to church, they told me, they’d done everything the teachers and schools and counselors had asked. I heard their recriminations: maybe we should have been stricter. Maybe we should have been less strict. Maybe I should have sent him to live with my mother when he first got in trouble. They struggled to get through every day, tired from their grief, from sleepless nights and from pretending that they didn’t see the stares and disapproving looks from their neighbors and coworkers.

  “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about how you two met,” I said. Alan spoke first, beginning to smile slightly as he thought of his own childhood and his courtship. Alan and Maria had met as young children. They both lived in large extended families in the same small, rural community. They attended the same school, prayed in the same church and lived in the same neighborhood. They were economically poor, but wealthy in family. They grew up surrounded by cousins, aunties, uncles and grandparents. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, but that meant everyone cared, too. In Alan and Maria’s hometown children were never far from the watchful eyes of one relative or another.

  Maria dropped out of high school at fifteen, becoming a maid at a local hotel. Alan stayed on until graduation, then started work at a nearby factory. They got married when he was twenty and she was eighteen. He did well at the factory and made a good living. Soon Maria got pregnant.

  This pregnancy was a joyous event for both extended families. Maria was pampered, and she was able to quit work to stay home with their child. The young family lived in the basement apartment of a building owned by an uncle. Her parents lived next door; his family, one block over. As they discussed this time in their lives, they smiled at each other. Alan did most of the talking, while Maria nodded her agreement. Frank listened intently as if he had never heard about his parents’ early life. At moments the family almost seemed to forget what had brought them here.

  As Alan dominated the conversation, I would occasionally try to direct a question to Maria, but most of the time she would just smile at me politely and then look to her husband who would then answer instead. In time it became clear that Maria, though kindhearted and polite, was mentally impaired. She didn’t seem to understand many of my questions. Finally, I asked her, “Did you like school?” Alan looked at me and said quietly, “She is not good at those things. She is maybe a little slow in that way.” She looked at me sheepishly and I nodded and smiled back. Both her husband and her son were clearly protective of her.

  Alan went on, describing the birth of their first son, Frank. After Maria came home from the hospital, the grandmothers, aunties and older cousins spent hours with the young mother and her new child. Both mother and baby were immersed in the attention and love of their extended families. When Maria felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for this dependent little being, there was always an aunt or a cousin or her own mother around to help. When his cries drove her crazy, she could always get a break by asking a family member to babysit.

  But then Alan lost his job. He looked diligently for new work, but the factory had closed and decent jobs for people without a college education became nearly impossible to find. After six months of unemployment he managed to get another factory job, but it was in a city, one hundred miles away. He felt he had no choice but to take it.

  The family, with now three-year-old Frank, relocated to an apartment complex in the city. The only place they could afford was in a devastated inner-city neighborhood plagued with high rates of violent crime and drug use. Few people worked and few had roots in the area. As is often the case in this country, extended families were scattered, not living close together as they had back home. Most of the households with children were hea
ded by single mothers.

  Soon Maria became pregnant with Leon. This pregnancy, however, was very different from her first one. Maria was now alone all day long in a small apartment with a toddler as her only companion. She was bewildered by her new life—and lonely. She didn’t know anyone and didn’t know how to reach out to her neighbors. Alan worked long hours, and when he came home he was exhausted. Maria’s three-year-old son became her best friend. They spent hours together. They would walk to a nearby park, take the bus to the free museums in the city, and participate in a mother’s drop-in program at a church. Maria developed a routine in which she would leave the apartment early in the morning and stay out all day, picking up groceries just before she returned home. The routine was comforting. She created a repetitive pattern of activity and the familiar faces she saw each day were some tiny connection to others, reminding her of the familiarity of the world she left behind. Still, she missed her family. She missed her neighborhood. She missed the group of experienced women who had helped her raise her first baby.

  Then, Leon was born. Maria was now overwhelmed by the inevitable neediness of a newborn. She never had to raise a baby alone before. It became clear to me that the family had understood Maria’s limitations and, when needed, had stepped in to provide a loving, predictable and safe environment for Frank. But when Leon was born this relational safety net was absent. I was starting to see why Leon and Frank had turned out so differently.

  “He was such a fussy baby. He cried,” Maria told me, describing Leon. She smiled. I smiled back.

  “And how would you calm him down?”

  “I tried to feed him. Sometimes he would take the bottle and stop.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Sometimes he would not stop. So we would go on our walk.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Frank.”

  “Ah.”

  “Did anyone ever come to help you take care of Leon?”

  “No. We would wake up and feed him and then go for our walk.”

  “Was this like the walks you took before Leon was born?”

  “Yes. We go to the park. Play for a while. Take the bus to the church and have lunch. Then go to the children’s museum. Take the bus to the market to buy food for dinner. And then go home.”

  “So you were gone most of the day.”

  “Yes.”

  Little by little it became clear that from the time Leon was four weeks old, the mother had resumed her “walks” with her oldest son, by then a four-year-old. She left baby Leon alone in a dark apartment. My heart sank as I listened to the mother—innocent, yet ignorant of the crucial needs of an infant—describe her systematic neglect of her youngest son. It was hard to be critical: she had given her four-year-old loving and attentive care. But at the same time she had deprived her newborn of the experiences necessary for him to form and maintain healthy relationships.

  “He stopped crying so much,” she said, indicating that she thought that her solution to the problem had worked.

  But as he grew older, both parents related, Leon never responded to their parenting the same way that Frank did. Whenever they reprimanded Frank, he felt bad that he had disappointed his parents and he corrected his behaviors. When Frank was told that he’d done well, he smiled and it was easy to see that he found pleasing his parents to be rewarding. The little boy was always hugging someone, running up to Mom or Dad and wrapping his little arms around them.

  When Leon was scolded or punished, however, he showed no emotion. He didn’t seem to care that he’d let his parents down or hurt someone else emotionally or physically. He didn’t correct his behavior. When his parents or teachers were pleased with him and gave him positive attention, he seemed equally unaffected. He actively avoided being touched, or touching others.

  Over time he learned to use flattery, flirtation and other forms of manipulation to get what he wanted. If that did not work, he did what he wanted when he wanted anyway, and if he wasn’t given what he asked for, then he took it. If he got caught doing something wrong, he would lie, and if he got caught in a lie, he was indifferent to lectures and punishment. All he seemed to learn from punishment was how to improve his deception and better hide his bad behavior. Teachers, counselors, youth ministers and coaches all said the same thing: Leon didn’t seem to care about anyone or anything but himself. The normal relational rewards and consequences—making your parents proud, making a friend happy, feeling upset if you hurt a loved one—did not matter to him.

  So he started to get in trouble, first at preschool, then kindergarten, then elementary school. At first it was little things: stealing candy, minor bullying, poking classmates with pencils, talking back to teachers, ignoring the rules. But by third grade he had been referred for mental health services. By fifth grade he was a regular in the juvenile justice system, brought up on charges of truancy, theft and vandalism. This callous and criminal behavior qualified him for the diagnosis of “conduct disorder” by age ten.

  When Maria had taken Frank out for walks, Leon had wailed in his crib at first. But he’d soon learned that crying would bring no aid, so he stopped. He lay there, alone and uncared for, with no one to talk to him and no one to praise him for learning to turn over or crawl (and not much room to explore anyway). For most of the day he heard no language, saw no new sights, and received no attention.

  Like Laura and Virginia, Leon had been deprived of the critical stimuli necessary to develop the brain areas that modulate stress and link pleasure and comfort with human company. His cries had gone unanswered, his early need for warmth and touch unmet. At least Virginia had known consistent care in her foster homes, even though she was moved from one to another repeatedly, and at least Laura had known the constant presence of her mother, even if she hadn’t received enough physical affection from her. But Leon’s early life was maddeningly inconstant. Sometimes Maria would pay attention to him, others times she would leave him home alone for the whole day. Occasionally Alan was home and would play with him, but more often he was out working or too exhausted from his long days to cope with a baby. An environment of such intermittent care punctuated by total abandonment may be the worst of all worlds for a child. The brain needs patterned, repetitive stimuli to develop properly. Spastic, unpredictable relief from fear, loneliness, discomfort and hunger keeps a baby’s stress system on high alert. Receiving no consistent, loving response to his fears and needs, Leon never developed the normal association between human contact and relief from stress. What he learned instead was that the only person he could rely on was himself.

  When he did interact with others, his neediness made him seem alternately demanding, aggressive and cold. In vain attempts to get the love and attention he desperately required, Leon would lash out, hit people, take things, and destroy them. Receiving only punishment, his rage grew. And the “worse” he behaved, the more he confirmed to those around him that he was “bad” and didn’t deserve their affection. It was a vicious cycle, and as Leon got older his misbehavior escalated from bullying into crime.

  Leon could see that other people liked to be hugged and touched, but since his own needs for that had been neglected, he began to find it repellent. He could see that other people enjoyed interacting with each other, but because he’d been denied early attention, it now mostly left him cold. He just didn’t understand relationships.

  Leon could enjoy food, could enjoy material pleasures like toys and television, and could relish physical sensations, including those associated with his developing sexuality. But because he’d been neglected when key social circuitry of the brain was developing he couldn’t really appreciate the pleasure of pleasing someone else or receiving their praise, nor did he suffer particularly from the rejection that followed if his behavior displeased teachers or peers. Having failed to develop an association between people and pleasure, he saw no need to do as they wished, felt no joy in making them happy, and didn’t care whether or not they got hurt.

  When he was t
wo-and-a-half, Leon’s behavioral problems qualified him for an early intervention preschool program, which could have been a great opportunity, but in fact only worsened his problems. Now his mother no longer left him alone during the day, and he was exposed to enough cognitive stimulation to learn to talk and to intellectually understand what was expected of him. But this didn’t make up for what he’d missed. While well intentioned, the program had only one caregiver to handle five or six severely troubled toddlers, a child to adult ratio that may not be enough to give appropriate attention to normal children that age, let alone those with emotional disorders.

  The cognitive development of his cortex did, however, allow Leon to take note of how other people behaved. Over time he became able to mimic appropriate behavior when he wanted to. This allowed him to manipulate others into getting what he wanted, though his underdeveloped limbic and relational neural systems limited him to shallow, superficial relationships. For him people were just objects that either stood in his way or acceded to his needs. He was a classic sociopath (the psychiatric diagnosis is antisocial personality disorder, or ASPD), and one I think who was almost entirely a product of his environment, not his genes. I believe that if he had been raised the way his brother Frank had been, he probably would have grown up to have a normal life, and would almost certainly have never become a murderer and rapist.

  Even the steps taken to help him—for example the preschool intervention program that placed him in a group of other disturbed children—only worsened his condition. Research has repeatedly found that surrounding a child with other troubled peers only tends to escalate bad behavior. This pattern of backfiring interventions would continue through his childhood and adolescence as he was shunted into “special ed” and other programs. There, he also found other antisocial peers who reinforced each other’s impulsivity. They became partners in crime, egging each other on and modeling for each other the idea that violence is the best way to solve problems. Furthermore, through what he saw in his neighborhood, at the movies and on the TV that was always on in most of the places where he spent his time, he also got the message that violence solves problems and that there was pleasure to be had in wielding physical power over others. Leon learned to copy the worst of human behavior, but remained unable to understand why he should imitate the best.