No, it really isn't that simple. SA KNEW JA had mental issues and needed help, yet she did nothing about it. :furious:
This is really unfair. The fact that Sandi did not GET psychiatric help for Jodi does not mean she did not TRY to get help for her. Here is a sample of responses from my own experiences:
Me: I desperately need help for my son who says he wants to hurt people. He has been violent his whole life. He thinks he has aids and wants to die.
Responses:
Do you have insurance?
Has he actually done anything?
Can you have him call us?
Call your family doctor.
Get a restraining order
Call the police.
Call right after an incident
How can you be sure he did this?
You have no proof and he denies it?
He has to admit it and ask for help
The victim also denies it?
I'm sorry ma'am we don't do that, let me refer you...
He has to come through the emergency room
We only provide charity after the incident
We only hold people for 24 hours, 3 days, 30 days
We have a DV/AA/NA support group
Whether the person is an adult or child, they have to be willing to describe their behavior truthfully and sincerely seek help. This is why I say it wouldn't matter even if she had made Jodi sit in front of a professional. She would have lied.
I have worked for a pediatric neurological psychologist doing evaluations of disturbed children. The evaluation itself is almost $1,000 and (rich) people would come from all over the country to have their troubled children diagnosed. The doctor would diagnose using games and tests which are designed to cross check each other - each child took almost ten tests, including one observing the child's interaction with the doctor's dogs.
My son was accurately diagnosed at significant expense in the seventies and I told you having a diagnosis does not mean you have "help". When they tell you your child is the "worst" they have seen and you are talking to a world-famous child psychiatrist and the next thing out of his mouth is "why don't you remarry," you realize they can't really help you. Your child is a subject, a data element, a curiosity, a case study.
When my son grew into adolescence, he considered it a form of intellectual sparring to go head to head with me in front of a school counselor, social worker, psychiatrist/etc and see who would be believed. To my absolute fury, these professionals would turn to me and say things like, "Your son says you are the one who threw the rock at his little brother. He says you have a drinking problem/drug problem/sex problem/OCD problem, etc. Is this true?" One time he even convinced an intake worker at a rehab facility that I was the one who should be admitted.
When we got home he would regale his brother with the stories of how he got the counselor to believe that his celibate, pregnant, temperate non-smoking, non-coffee-drinking Mormon mother was actually an alcoholic weed smoker with a cleanliness fetish. Of course this was only if he got a chance to talk to them first.
He fooled Food Stamp workers, Mormon bishops, psychiatrists, case workers, and lawyers because he had a lifetime of experience in mimicking emotions and he had an IQ over 150. He could not fool judges and anyone in the penal system.
A sociopathic teenager can tell a lie more effectively than you can tell the truth. I have no doubt in my mind that Ms. Arias threatened her mother that if she ever called in any professional help, she would make sure that she--Sandi--would be the one evaluated for involuntary commitment to a mental institution. And with her high-falutin words and her belief in her natural intellectual superiority (despite being a high school dropout), I think her threats might give her mother pause.
I could be wrong, but I think her reaction to her daughter's crime was disbelief and horror but not surprise. That would be my reaction should my son have committed a heinous murder. I think Jodi has verbally and physically abused Sandi for years, taking advantage of her mother's love for her to use and abuse her. She clearly has nothing but contempt for her for accepting this abuse.
Who KICKS a mother who has come to help her move???
What you see in court that appears to be stoicism or coldness or blunted affect and even the rudeness towards Travis' family is not what it seems.
I think it is the wilted, defeated affect of a lifelong victim--she is afraid of her daughter.