Chazz Petrella : The Boy Who Should Have Lived - the fifth estate

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tonight on the Fifth Estate from the time he was out of the week Chazz Petrella was a boy on the go and he had such a zest and just a bubbling all the time but soon that energy was too much for even Chazz to control mental illness was something that Petrelli's like most families didn't understand we had reached out and asked for help and said we we don't know where to turn there were programs professionals know if this was cancer this would be Stage four in a province that prides itself on treating the mentally ill nine different agencies had Chaz and his family on their books until it was too late and after all that how does that talk the old boy end up hanging from a tree I want to know tonight the story of Chaz Petrella the boy who should have lived [Music] good evening I'm Jillian Findlay stories about mental illness are difficult hard to tell and hard to watch stories about children suffering from mental illness likely make you want to turn away but we're hoping tonight that you won't because tonight a courageous family is going to share their story about mental illness about a son who was much loved and who is now terribly missed they're doing it because they think there are things to be learned from their experience things that can and should be changed and because there's was a boy who lost his battle with the darkness a boy who should have had every reason to want to live um hey guys I am I just recently started playing guitar so I'm going to play a song I sort of suck so yeah tell me guys if you won't like my videos but I don't get much people watching but there was always a sweetness about Chad's Petrella come on daddy right from the beginning come on he was always the baby the youngest in the Petrelli's brood of five I think that made him the biggest cuddler of all the children he loved the cuddle I he was charming the negotiator always always had to come back always had something to say and you know great sense of humor he also had a great sense of adventure into everything sports in particular a kid in perpetual motion chess was always full of energy I'd love to try anything he loved to play he loved life loved he loved everything he really really did which made growing up in Coburg Ontario pretty ideal dad Frank owned a hairdressing business mom Janet was a sales manager a heritage house a hobby farm and a group of friends including Keegan Ellison who shared his love of daring she's all tied to try during the roof jumping what we like to do was here and there we go like over and like climb fences and like jump off of this place structures and guys were Daredevils weren't you yeah skateboard park chairs was often the smallest and the bravest everything seemed as it should have been until he started school [Music] [Applause] [Music] they're the fearlessness and the impulsiveness were problems chairs couldn't seem to focus and when he got frustrated he got aggressive we thought okay maybe this is a school issue maybe he's having problems with that specific teacher and he didn't he stopped wanting to go to school so then it became a bottle of getting him there so we thought this let's switch schools and did that help no they had him tested for learning disabilities but that didn't seem to be an issue his behavior was the problem Chaz's pediatrician diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD and like thousands of children in this country he was put on medication but the drugs kept him awake at night and his behavior got worse there were obsessions fire smoking even marijuana his parents found homemade pipe stashed in his bedroom Chaz was nine man sometimes I really upset the older he got the more defiant he became erratic he'd fly into rages and break things and minutes later be sobbing when he finally did reel himself back in or get managed to calm himself down he realized that he had broken something that he really liked and then would get himself escalated again and then he would feel horrible and huge remorse remorse and and so much guilt and if embarrassment so it was really difficult but how he felt afterwards was just absolutely heartbreaking one moment he'd be an angel and the next he be just destroying everything in a sight which as his sister gia remembers is the turmoil what was it like living in a house with that kind of a tension I guess it was very hard you know I like not only did our relationship with Josh suffered but our relationships with each other suffered you know we weren't talking as much our family dinners didn't happen anymore our family fun nights we have on Saturday they weren't anything anymore without someone getting upset I'm frustrated or breaking something whatever was wrong Chas didn't understand sometimes he just needed to get away he'd be out his bedroom window and into the woods for hours he'd be gone they'd often find him just sitting in a tree did you worry about him I did you know I just tried to be understanding and be loving and compassionate to get him through but there was also a point where he didn't he didn't understand that's what I was trying to be but how could he when he was feeling so overwhelmed in his feelings he was only 9 or 10 at the time but did he have the ability to articulate what was going on no he he would say you know he can't shut his brain off he would say he can't think he can't control it and I think that was that was really hard for him because he couldn't articulate how he felt do you think he was scared of himself yeah I think so yeah he was scared and he was about to do something that would scare everyone else it was after another meltdown that they discovered a chair in the basement and a rope he had strung a rope in the basement through a pipe and you don't think much of it you just think he was just playing or climbing something so you don't worry but I know my parents were very worried I know they had talked about it when we approached him on what was going on you know he assured us he wasn't doing anything he wasn't gonna do anything I was just joking around I really didn't know what to think about it at the time you won't even know about the concept of suicide hi I haven't like I said I have no idea we had many serious conversations between the two of us some of the outcomes that you know we could expect with Chaz in his behavior and but we always we always had hope that dumb excuse me sorry that we would get a word on the hump you know that maybe you would dad level I would have bid for the Petrella 's the rope in the basement was a turning point the trouble with Chaz was more than they could handle on their own they tried special school programs reached out to Children's Aid the local mental health provider Ken arc Child and Family Services had opened a file but none of it produced answers and the family was exhausted it was a social worker who suggested a residential facility 24-hour care and that is how at the age of 10 Chaz Petrella ended up in an institution when we come back I was told to come and get my son and I'm like part pardon me tosses in a jail cell you [Music] damnit that's better-looking so pain to go to rock-and-roll tonight at the age of ten Chaz Petrella was a charming but troubled boy so troubled that in 2012 his parents decided he couldn't live at home anymore and they placed him in an institution how difficult was that decision for you to make to take your child and yours was horrible it was really really horrible for us but we really felt like you know there was gonna be a strong chance that we wouldn't lose him if if we didn't make that choice besides the place called hand-in-hand didn't look like an institution more like a home it had programs that Petrelli's were told and lots of experience dealing with children like Chaz we were getting a sense of relief that that help was on its way that programs and tools were being put in place to assist him primarily but also to assist us but Chaz wasn't happy at hand-in-hand he was the youngest by far and complained the older kids bullied him his file shows the psychiatrist in charge of his case had serious concerns about the quality of care he was receiving she suspected Chaz suffered from generalized anxiety disorder but the only way to know for sure and therefore to know how to treat him would be to have him psychologically tested as soon as possible she said and yet for some reason those tests never happened do you know why he wasn't assess no I don't know if they don't have the doctors I don't know if they don't have the funding for that I don't know what it is that each time they would say that he would need something and it never it never gets done instead after six months Chaz was returned to his family sweat what followed was in retrospect a bit of a honeymoon for the Petrelli's Chazz was happier at home they'd adjusted his medications and that helped for a while and he was able to return to school part-time to keep an eye on him the rest of the time Frank decided to move his hair salon into the family home and they also hired an educational assistant Stacy Sawyer one of the few who seemed to be able to get through to Chaz he was funny he was cute he was he was just like a normal little boy was spending time and I know people will say he was difficult and he wasn't rude and and all those other things but I was able to separate the boy from the behavior so I saw past the behavior I knew that the behavior wasn't Chaz Chaz seemed to know that too at one point he was asked to fill out a questionnaire what were his strengths skateboarding breakdancing and making friends his challenges homework controlling his anger and sleep how badly did he want to change his behaviors Chaz circled 7 totally did he think he could change again 7 he really did think he could but as anyone who has struggled with mental illness will tell you even the best intentions can go sideways by the summer of 2013 Chaz was still having trouble sleeping and was back to old habits climbing out his bedroom window in search of adventure or simply distraction we had started setting our alarms for every two to three hours at night over the night so that we would wake up and make sure he was in his bed I can't put bars on his windows it's against fire code I can we locked all the doors and we had sensors for all the doors as he went down to the basement and cut the wires to our alarm system so that the doors wouldn't like the sensors wouldn't go off they were never sure where they'd find him one night he was curled up asleep in the mall but they soon learned about the crowd he was hanging out with kids in their late teens even 20s kids with access to drugs childhood friends like Keaton Ellison all but forgotten when I heard that he was doing drugs and I was like really upset and disappointed did you try to talk to him about that he didn't really like he wouldn't listen when I talked to her about it you tried to ask him and yeah and he didn't want to listen to you yeah by the time September rolled around the Petrelli's were hoping a new school year might bring stability but on day two Chaz went into a rage throwing his desk and trashing the classroom there was no way he could return when the behavior continued at home his panicked mother called the mental health crisis center half an hour away but Chaz was refusing to go so Janet had to enlist his pregnant sister Jia to help get him there he kind of carried him hand and foot and out to the car and I basically had to hold him down in the back seat so my mom was holding him down trying to get him calm and saying that we were going to get him help you know and then he gave up when we got to the 401 God okay we're all right we're gonna get there within seconds it turned again and he grabbed her hair while she was driving and basically her position of her head was like this looking up at this let's root for the car so she couldn't see anything I somehow managed to pull over to the side of the road was very scared my mom was very scared so we got him calm again and then kept on driving and then it happened a second time for a second time she managed to pull over but still Chaz was determined he undid the window and was trying to climb through the back window and he was getting to a point where I knew like I wasn't gonna be able to hold onto him anymore my biggest thing that was crossing my mind is he's gonna run up over to the 401 amid the commotion they've managed to call 911 pumping through his system it would take two large police officers to restrain Chazz a boy of just 89 pounds I just remember looking in and seeing them so upset in handcuffs and he would hit his head off the window like so hard it was just heartbreaking an ambulance delivered Chazz to the crisis center where his parents asked he be committed under the Mental Health Act the 11 year old was placed in a secure room with padded walls his parents assumed he'd finally now get the help he needed I believe it was within three hours they released him they released him after all of that yeah so I was so upset and I didn't know what to do and I I called them some of the agencies and I said what do I do you know like this is what it took to get me here and now they're gonna put tell me to go and put them back in my car to take him home like I that isn't even safe for me to put him in a car even before the incident on the 401 there have been meetings all the agencies involved with the Petrelli's Children's Aid the school board the regional mental health provider everyone was concerned and yet no one seemed to have a plan in June of 2013 another agency was brought in service coordination an arm of the Ontario Ministry responsible for Child and Youth Services with a mandate to bring some cohesion to Chaz's care and to take charge of funding Alex Muir was the Service Coordinator assigned to Chaz's case he quickly noticed that the comprehensive testing that had been recommended more than a year earlier still hadn't been done and so he fast-tracked Chaz into one of the best pediatric mental health facilities in the province a place called youth deaf where he could be monitored for up to 30 days we were told they had the facilities to do sleep analysis neurological testing a medication tweaking under monitoring you know so James change the dosage or change the medication but have that surveillance or the team of people who know what to look for is either the specialist this is how I said we were kind of sold on it as and this is the crisis center this is like we're gonna get some answers here Youth Dale could have been a turning point in Chad's Petrelli's life it was a place someone might have figured out what was wrong with him but Chaz was still being uncooperative refusing to talk to some of the doctors outright and there was another problem money some of the tests the doctors wanted cost extra in Chaz's case up to $4,000 more a request was made to service coordinator Alex Muir but for reasons neither he nor the ministry will explain to us the funds were never approved so the tests were never done there is a discussion about who's going to pay and at one point and there's a document and I don't know if you have seen this Frank but that money was an impediment to testing came as a surprise to the patrollers he showed them the documents we'd found in Chaz's file but did you know what the tables on it our never brought up anything about money anything about financing for any of the programs if it was ever an issue of funding why didn't somebody invoice us for a funding why didn't somebody say to that say to you say to us here's what it's gonna cost this is what funding or what testings gonna cost can you pay that would you have paid it we would have found a way to definitely like find that kind of money or to even find how to get the money if we didn't have the money yeah it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever discharge notes from youth Dale show that doctor suspected Chaz suffered from anxiety possibly major depression but the kind of comprehensive assessment that might have led to a diagnosis was never done after the 30 days he was released as you've read through this what conclusions you coming to in your with the betrayal is permission we shared Chaz's records with a panel of experienced child psychiatrists all of whom called Youth Dale a missed opportunity everybody agreed yeah that the psychological testing was necessary dr. Marshall Kornblum is in charge of a leading psychiatric clinic and teaches at the University of Toronto this boy's was so complex and so difficult to treatment know if this was cancer this would be Stage four so he was already in a treatment somewhat treatment resistant phase which requires longer time spent but for Chaz there was no more time Ontario law says 30 days is as long as any child can stay in a crisis facility on an emergency basis Youth Dale had no choice but to release Chaz Petrella which to our panel underscores a huge problem with the system you know the waiting list for youth Dale is as long as it is anywhere else and you know that's where I think that kids are not widgets and children's mental health centers are not factories and if we use a cookie cutter approach where every kid is in and out by 30 days we're not going to be meeting the needs of the kids instead the question would become where could 11 year old Chaz go next there would be another residential group home disaster police had to remove Chas from that one after he allegedly punched a staff member his parents were at a loss and increasingly so was Chaz he started to almost feel like he was being bounced around because he would quite often say to us well dad what's the point it's not going to make a difference anyways so that mean he was losing hope do you watch he was because anything that they had put him into yes didn't work but then last winter a place that looked like it might work after all it's a kid he thrived there did he do well he did really really well but at what price when we come back the Petrella 'he's faced a terrible choice they said to you yes if you want your son to go here just there's money if you if he was a ward of the state you by the time Chaz Petrella was 11 and a half he'd been in and out of three schools two residential facilities and a psychiatric crisis center he was surrounded by doctors mental health workers and social workers and yet no one had succeeded in doing the test that might have led to a diagnosis in the meantime his behavior was deteriorating after being kicked out of the last group home a place was found at a rural treatment center east of Toronto Bayfield is a privately run school specializing in kids with behavior problems tuition here starts at $21,000 a year which buys a lot of individual attention everything there was there was designed to support kids like him so he didn't feel centered out as far as his behavior one of the things that Chaz enjoyed about that and he told me specifically was that if he felt overwhelmed he could excuse himself to the hallway and they would have a staff member outside with them you know supervising him but he could go out there and just decompress for five minutes 10 minutes 15 whatever amount of time it took his report card reflected the difference all A's and B's the kid who'd been labeled disruptive his entire life was now described as a pleasure in the classroom a good team player and often a good leader for his parents it was almost too good to be true and as it turned out it was too good to be true once again Chaz's treatment would turn on funding because he'd arrived at Bayfield on an emergency basis his tuition was covered by the government for the first 30 days alex muir the service coordinator agreed to extend that twice which allowed Chaz to stay till the end of the school year but if he was to return to be filled the following year it would be up to his parents to pay with three other children still at home that was out of the question we're not in a financial situation to pay for this program I mean we've just spent the last two three years proving that he needs to be in a facility realizing that he needs to be there it's a great spot for him and it comes to money and it would get worse it turned out there was a way for Chaz to stay at bay field for free all the patrollers had to do was give up custody of him if my son was a awarded to the crown or you know ward of the state there would be funding for him to go to that school so if I give up my rights to him as my as as a parent they would have the funding to get send him to that school but because I wouldn't give up those rights there's no funding for him did somebody suggest to you that you should give up oh yes they said to you yes if you want your son to go here just there's money if you if he was a ward of the state what did you think it was unbelievable it does seem unbelievable at the very least unfair that government agencies would have pressured the patrollers that way according to Ontario government policy it never should have happened no parent the government says should ever have to choose between keeping their children and getting treatment as for who should have paid for Chaz's tuition at bay field documents show that service coordinator Alex Muir made it clear to the Petrelli's that Chaz had been initially funded as an exception the cost of keeping him at the school for another year was not sustainable given the funds and so in June Chazz was forced to leave though one place he had thrived his education now the responsibility of his local school board in other words the patrollers were back to where they'd started I got the letter from the principal saying that he should not be he's not going to be successful he's not ready can't self-regulate to that point where he could be successful in a regular classroom did that have an effect on the people who were making the decisions about funding at this point no how could anybody have thought that sending it the file back to the public school board was going to be the solution at that point once again our panel saw it as a turning point until he retired doctor David Gottlieb was head of emergency psychiatry at one of Toronto's largest hospitals this is a kid who's done well in a structured setting yes and then the funding runs out and he has a completely unstructured unfunded no support at all over the last part of the spring and all through the summer and the uncertainty of I don't know where I'm going in September so there's a clear linkage between treatment stopping and then the situation getting dire [Music] things did get dire that summer Chazz barely came out of his room when his parents checked they saw the results of his anxiety and frustration at the end of July Chazz turned 12 he wanted no celebration he told his family just a milkshake from the Dairy Queen you could see in how he looked he got skinnier and she just looked tired like he'd been working all the hair something you know like exhausted he looked like not as any twelve-year-old shudder you know he looked like he was drained emotionally drained two nights before Chazz Petrella died his parents made this recording just relaxing and just let y'all just go to sleep honey it's 11:30 they wanted to show all the people they trusted to help them with their son just not they were up against thank you you took his sleeping that right what son well you know you got to relax what do you think that video showed his torment torment yep it's heartbreaking watching that yeah yeah cuz he just like I said he had no control he couldn't sleep you could see he's almost like crawling in his skin right that he doesn't know what to do with himself and we didn't know what else to do we really really didn't [Applause] the next night his raging was worse Chad's put his fist through his bedroom wall and Janet rushed him to the emergency ward he got a cast and a powerful sedative twice an adult dose but four hours later they were back at the hospital Chad's his mother told the doctor had chewed the cast right off in the room she's like you know I would keep him but I don't have the stuff I don't have the beds and she said there's nothing there's nothing I can do and she talked to Chaz and she said you know why are you doing this and he's he said to her you know I don't know I'm kind of sad I'm confused I'm frustrated and he was like for the first time I've really ever heard him talk about emotions as Jen had finished with the doctor Chaz disappeared he decided to walk the three kilometers home alone he arrived just before dawn I was sleeping and he came into my room and came over - he gave me a kiss and he said I bow sorry he said he said hey dad I'm a home and I said that's great son I said go get some sleep he left my room and he into his room and then Jenny called a few minutes later and she's like that we can't find him and I said he's home it was around 10:00 that morning that Frank discovered Chaz's bed was empty and went looking for him I have an office at the back of the house here it's it's gonna goodbye my garage so it's a two levels and beside my beside the garage was his favorite tree that he would climb quite often when he was feeling overwhelmed that's where he would go and hide so I guess it was vote ten to twelve I guess we're on then I went up to the office hidden um as I was coming back out I saw him in the tree and I thought he was just climbing it and so I yelled at him to get out and that you know we were worried sick about him and then as I came down the steps and got a closer look I realized what he had done [Music] when we come back demanding answers when Chaz Petrella died he left so many questions did he mean to kill himself had he thought it through or was it just another impulse that 12 year old couldn't control he left no note it's a shocking statistic in Canada suicide is the second leading cause of death in children 10 to 19 although most who die are at the older end of that spectrum Chaz was unusual but there's nothing at all unusual about the problems exposed by his case not according to our panel how often are you limited in the treatment you can provide by funding daily it's a huge struggle dr. Jazmin gooster of Montreal's Jewish General Hospital says a family's means often dictates how much diagnostic testing they get because there's also an issue of a two-tier system in the sense that if you have resources in a family you can ask for certain kinds of things which people who don't have resources simply can't provide their children at high risk so that's one issue that is very clear to us another big issue that's clear a system that's too complex too fragmented but the way the system seems to work is I refer to this agency and this agency can only do so much and then there's an emergency and they refer to another service and then they're done in the ER for back to this service and there's no sense of continuity at these interfaces yeah I would agree it's definitely a matter of both resources and coordination each agency was doing what it could but it was the lack of coordination and communication amongst them in between them that in a sense that's how he fell through the cracks but how many times does the point have to be made since 2001 there have been eight different government reports in Ontario all emphasizing the need to do better when it comes to children and mental health in addition at least four coroner's juries have recommended specific changes that had they been implemented might have helped Chaz and his family making comprehensive assessments a priority to be done first thing after a child as identified as having problems and assigning each family a government-appointed guide someone to help navigate the fragmented system to protect their interests until the end there's a 12 year old boy who by all accounts had some real strengths really engaging and for over a number of years has had services in his life people in his life and after all that how does that 12 year old boy end up hanging from a tree I want to know Erwin Elmen is Ontario's children's advocate like the Petrella family he wants an inquest into Chaz's death and this time he wants the system to learn I often think of children electric as as as the tip of the iceberg that we know that they're a symptom of something larger and we need to solve that the best for children reach our full potential we wanted to interview Tracy McCarroll's Minister for Children and Youth Services about the issues exposed by Chaz's case she refused our many requests instead she provided a statement her ministry is working tirelessly she says to fix what she calls service gaps in Ontario's mental health system [Applause] as for the various agencies that dealt with the Petrella family no one at the office of service coordination can ark Child and Family Services or the Children's Aid Society would talk to us either I think there has to be accountability I think but it doesn't have to be a personal accountability but there has to be someone to say that these are flaws in the system that has to be held accountable by each one of these agencies that's very well pressure for sure seven months after Chaz's death the Petrella czar slowly coming to terms with life without him there's a new baby in the family now Chaz's sister gia has a daughter let's eat a little girl who will never know the uncle who was once so taken with her I remember he was in the facility Thanksgiving one year and we brought her she was just brand-new and he held her the whole time she went cried and he just wouldn't let her go he's a rocker I'll get her quiet again and he would they just made each other smile it was really beautiful he loved being uncle who knows what jazz Petrella might have become had he gotten the right kind of help had he had the chance to grow and mature they are though what ifs his family will always live with along with the memories you know there's key pieces of things that you want to make sure it lost or destroyed or there's a care that goes into putting them away or things that you want another child to use because it brought him such joy it's hard because you get to a point where you realize that there's no new pictures of Chaz there will never be new memories of Chaz so those kinds of things become more cherished you know so many people have said to us oh when I was younger I tried to commit suicide and I felt exactly the same way and you know when I hit like my 20s I was able to control it a little bit or with the right treatment you know I was able to and I think we just feel like he didn't get that chance [Music] you [Music]

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Channel: CBC News

Views: 4,011,111

Rating: 4.7666097 out of 5

Keywords: Chazz Petrella, Cobourg (City/Town/Village), suicide, CBC, CBC News (Website Owner), The Fifth Estate (Award-Winning Work)

Id: SBIckQnR7QA

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 41min 9sec (2469 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2015

Reddit Comments

Really good piece. That offer of school tuition in exchange for termination of parental rights was genuinely outrageous. That right there should have been enough to warrant a ruthless independent interrogation of the system.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Encripture 📅︎︎ Nov 02 2017 🗫︎ replies