LA - Lacey Fletcher 36, GRAPHIC, disabled, found dead, on couch for years, Jan'22 *Parents arrested*

[Lilibet]

It's kind of like the Fletchers just threw up their hands and said "oh well, she can just sit on the couch." Unfathomable.

I actually think this may be what gradually happened. They may have hoped she’d get tired of just sitting there on the couch…but she didn’t. And then what? While Google tells me that it’s easier to obtain an involuntary commitment in Louisiana than in many states, the 72 hours would not have been long enough to really help her. They said “she balked” so they didn’t pursue it. And they might have feared that she would get worse or just leave home and be on the streets. And then what?

I’m certainly not making excuses for them, but more like trying to see how this could happen. These parents do not appear to be like the Turpins who had a long history of abusing their children. Mental illness in a young person is a terrible thing for families to deal with. Getting appropriate help is extremely difficult and also requires a willingness to cooperate on the part of the patient. She was in her early 20s when this couch-sitting began…an adult. I’m trying to imagine what their legal, moral and ethical options were. Over time, they may well have felt they were out of options and just gave up. Not an excuse at all, of course! It’s easy to say we’d do such-and-such to end the couch-sitting. But in reality, if your child does not want help, what do you do?

I should add that I see this situation through the lens of good, but helpless parents. Our daughter had a high school classmate voted “most likely to succeed” who developed schizophrenia in his 20’s (now 51). I know his parents. Wonderful people. They tried everything, but their hands were tied and they could not prevent those times he went off his meds and endangered himself. No, he wasn’t living in a hole on their couch, but if he had been I’m not sure the system was equipped to help them. JMO

 

[azure]

I hope that would be the case, but how? It appears no one knew anything about their daughter. Their parents (victim's grandparents) are probably deceased. It seems they knew what they were doing; they knew it was wrong and should be kept hidden.

Yes, unless there's some sort of smoking gun on the autopsy or in her life before grade 9, I think all we'll hear at trial will be more lies/excuses/homecooked "diagnoses" from the "parents".

 

[Lilibet]

Yes, unless there's some sort of smoking gun on the autopsy or in her life before grade 9, I think all we'll hear at trial will be more lies/excuses/homecooked "diagnoses" from the "parents".

Yes, I’d very much like to know what her actual diagnoses were. There should be school records and medical records to back up what they’ve said. I would think her teachers would be interviewed by LE. Without supporting documentation, what her parents say at trial is worthless.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

It’s easy to say we’d do such-and-such to end the couch-sitting. But in reality, if your child does not want help, what do you do?

Since she was an adult, they could have called adult-protective-services to ask for help. As just one example of what they could have done.

 

[scriabina]

It’s easy to say we’d do such-and-such to end the couch-sitting. But in reality, if your child does not want help, what do you do?

Some simply ideas off the top of my head:

1. Show your child kindness, care and compassionate support
2. Utilize telemedicine
3. In their home state, contact a coroner and request an order of protective custody
4. Call 911
5. Just because daughter "balked" at getting outside care doesn't mean the parents couldn't have provided it for her. They should have proceeded, filed for guardianship and placed her in a home if the alternative was to allow her to die melted into a coach in a pool of her own feces.

 

[dalsglen]

Since she was an adult, they could have called adult-protective-services to ask for help. As just one example of what they could have done.

from dotr post #63
The Fletchers, who were Lacey's primary caretakers, claim they were able to communicate with her and she "never complained.

Yeah, sure she didn't. Happy to sit in her faeces and rot away.

 

[Marg from Oz]

Dead for two days and nobody noticed. When was she being fed? Both of them working. Surely they had money to hire a carer for a couple of hours a day to take care of her hygiene and nutrition. MOO but I think something was going on there from when she was taken out of school.

 

[Lilibet]

Since she was an adult, they could have called adult-protective-services to ask for help. As just one example of what they could have done.

Some simply ideas off the top of my head:

1. Show your child kindness, care and compassionate support
2. Utilize telemedicine
3. In their home state, contact a coroner and request an order of protective custody
4. Call 911
5. Just because daughter "balked" at getting outside care doesn't mean the parents couldn't have provided it for her. They should have proceeded, filed for guardianship and placed her in a home if the alternative was to allow her to die melted into a coach in a pool of her own feces.

Yes, these are all good suggestions and of course these are all things they absolutely should have tried and I would hope they did try…and more. They absolutely should have fought long and hard to get her off that couch and into care! Whether adult protective services, a 72 hour hold ordered by the coroner, calling 911, or filing for guardianship would have gotten appropriate long-term care for an uncooperative adult is the big question. Laws prohibit forcing an adult to stay in a facility and be treated. So they leave. Then what? Often they end up on the streets or in jail.

My point is that the system for dealing with both child and adult mental illness in this country is broken.

Google and read what barriers parents of mentally ill children and adults face. I am in NO way defending these parents! But as with many cases on Websleuths, this horrific case is an opportunity to dig deeper and learn. While our opinion of these parents is unlikely to change because what they did to Lacey is indefensible, a bit of online reading will expand our understanding of the mental health crisis that ultimately affects us all in one way or another.
JMO

This op-ed by a father is an example.
How to Fix a Broken Mental-Health System

Cultural dynamics and public-policy choices made my son’s problems, and those of others like him, much worse; our focus has been far more on less serious illnesses like anxiety and depression than on the most serious mental illnesses, and our deep and understandable concern about civil liberties has gone too far when it comes to those who either don’t recognize they are ill or have deep psychoses. For them, freedom of choice can mean homelessness, jail, or worse. Our commendable sensitivity to privacy also means that parents and other loved ones can be shut out of any role and knowledge of what their children, grandchildren, or siblings are encountering within the system.

 

[Abraham Cab]

I honestly cannot see any defense a lawyer tries to sway any jury. There literally is no excuse for this.

 

[Pseudonymph]

I think they didn't ask for help because after a certain point they knew how much trouble they'd be in. Denial and CYA syndrome.

 

[CHEL]

Parents charged.

A grand jury has indicted the parents of a woman who died in their home after spending years malnourished on a couch.

Sheila and Clay Fletcher are now charged with second-degree murder in the death of 36-year-old Lacey Fletcher.

Parents charged with murder in death of daughter who rotted away on couch

 

[moonriverfarm]

GOOD.

 

[Blondie in Spokane]

Parents charged.

A grand jury has indicted the parents of a woman who died in their home after spending years malnourished on a couch.

Sheila and Clay Fletcher are now charged with second-degree murder in the death of 36-year-old Lacey Fletcher.

Parents charged with murder in death of daughter who rotted away on couch

***Warning the following sentence is absolutely nauseating***

Good God, the floorboards underneath the couch were rotting away. I hadn’t read that yet & almost lost it while typing this.
Unbelievable.

 

[tlcya]

how did these folks go about their daily lives outside the home without reeking themselves? The smell would surely have seeped into everything they owned, including their own clothing? I suspect the living room was somehow separated from their own living space, making it easier to "ignore the problem"

 

[moonriverfarm]

BRPROUD | Parents of woman found dead on couch face 2nd-degree murder

Parents went out of town for four days before the day her death was reported. She was left alone in the house.

 

[tlcya]

BRPROUD | Parents of woman found dead on couch face 2nd-degree murder

Parents went out of town for four days before the day her death was reported. She was left alone in the house.

Is there a link that isn't behind a paywall to that info? Or can you supply a snip of the article that describes that? TIA

 

[Lilibet]

Parents charged.

A grand jury has indicted the parents of a woman who died in their home after spending years malnourished on a couch.

Sheila and Clay Fletcher are now charged with second-degree murder in the death of 36-year-old Lacey Fletcher.

Parents charged with murder in death of daughter who rotted away on couch

Good. Given their brief comments on FB and “blaming Lacey” when the story broke, I suspect they might just be arrogant enough to plead not guilty, go to trial and testify. If that happens, I expect that they will try to play the victim and turn this into an indictment of the mental health care system, possibly using some of the points I mentioned previously. While I certainly hope those tactics don’t work at trial, I do hope a trial might shine a floodlight on the huge gaps mentally ill adults fall through. Which brings me to…

One last soapbox rant…
There simply are not enough laws in place to allow involuntary commitment for much longer than 72 hours, nor are there enough facilities to hold mentally ill citizens long enough to help them. Mental illness is not a crime, any more than cancer or covid is, so treatment cannot be forced. Sure, if the mentally ill person runs afoul of the legal system, they can be held in jail or prison where little to no effective help is provided. At some point they are released and the cycle continues.

Historically, abuses in mental health facilities (insane asylums) caused the legal pendulum to swing so far in the other direction that patients were released and most hospitals were closed in order to save money. The outpatient clinics that the federal law intended for the states to provide did not open in sufficient numbers (for the $ame rea$on). So a mentally ill person often ends up back in society, with few options for inpatient care or effective outpatient care even if they want it. If they don’t want care, there isn’t a lot their families can do unless perhaps they can persuade the state to step in. I’m truly not sure how or if the system can be fixed at this point.

Let me be clear, whatever Lacey’s diagnoses were, and however much autonomy the system granted her, she did not deserve this inhumane treatment by her parents. It’s clearly criminal and a tragedy. In my own small community of 22,000, there are a number of untreated homeless citizens downtown every day, talking to lamp posts or rain puddles or to no one in particular. My heart goes out to them. But at least they are alive, unlike Lacey.
JMO

 

[sallye818]

I'll probably have tomatoes thrown all over me, but aside from the possibility that Lacey had been abused for a long time,(and that could very well be) I do have to wonder if this was a similar mentality to hoarding. I once knew a lady, a very attractive and intelligent professional, that hoarded horses. Rather than call someone to come take them when she couldn't physically or financially take care of them anymore, she just kept them and watched them , emaciated, waste away to nothing. I talked to her afterwards and could not begin to understand her reasoning. She even had delusions that if she gave them away, they'd be used for medical testing and be killed. (Yet she was killing them herself.)

I wonder, if due to her severe social anxiety and possibly being sheltered (home-schooled since 9th grade, and possibly agoraphobic since she didn't go out), when she balked at the idea of medical intervention or placement at a facility, her parents crazily thought they were somehow being compassionate to let her stay home...and then it got totally out of control Yes, to us, it makes no sense, but perhaps they couldn't bear to have her placed away from home. I don't know enough about the parents to make an informed judgment. Would very much love to hear from neighbors, and other family members. My guess is that the family very much isolated themselves once Lacey got to a certain point in her deterioration.

 

[moonriverfarm]

Is there a link that isn't behind a paywall to that info? Or can you supply a snip of the article that describes that? TIA

Neglected woman who died on parents' sofa starved to death, had not seen doctor in 20 years

 

[azure]

Neglected woman who died on parents' sofa starved to death, had not seen doctor in 20 years

"Fletcher had a severe case of autism and was non-verbal."
Is this true? From what past articles have reported, she was in a regular school until 9th grade. Was she in special ed there?

I'd really love to know if she was diagnosed with autism or any other disorder. I know autism can cause regression, but not, to my knowledge, in the teen years.

I'm tired of seeing diagnoses used casually in this case. Unless it's been diagnosed by a doctor, the media should not be reporting it.