Interview With An Evil Child (AND WHERE SHE IS TODAY!)

are people afraid of you beth beth thomas was just six years old when her deep blue eyes shocked american society after this documentary about her life was broadcasted on television undaunted and bored beth recounted how she tried to murder her younger brother when she was going to kill her parents and why she had stolen knives from the family kitchen despite her short life she had suffered brutal abuse from her biological father the girl had been diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder rad a condition in which young children failed to establish healthy bonds with their parents or caregivers due to extreme abuse her signs of psychopathy had been developed as a form of self-defense against the outside world beth thomas was adopted at 19 months old along with their 7th month old brother jonathan by tim and julie a conservative american couple who had been married for 12 years but were unable to have children of their own although tim mentioned not needing children to make their lives complete they decided to venture into adoption as a means of sharing and transmitting the completeness julie seemed more excited about the idea of adoption and mentioned that it was a dream shared by both finally in 1984 they were notified of the availability of adoption of beth and jonathan they were surprised by the speed of the process and they were told that they were normal and healthy as if they were children without a past like two blank books later they obtained information regarding the living conditions that both children had before their adoption and discovered that the children lived in a despicable environment both showed signs of having been mistreated and abandoned and their food and hygiene conditions were precarious beth showed signs of having been sexually abused by her father and could spend a whole day alone with a box of cereal to eat jonathan lived reclining in a crib surrounded by urine and dirty diapers and his head was misshapen from having spent so much time in the same pose while his back was completely flat his forehead had bumps the boy was seven months old and the lack of stimulation had affected his abilities he could not raise his head or turn around after a short time they noticed that beth began to show aggressive and sexual behaviors that were gradually increasing mainly directed towards her brother but also towards her adoptive parents and domestic animals through hitting kicking the use of pins to prick them pinching her brother's genitals self-injurious genital masturbation in public places and confessions about wanting to kill jonathan tim and julie when they were overwhelmed by the situation they decided to take beth to dr ken maggot a clinical psychologist specializing in abused children who conducted this interview with beth presented in the video when she was six and a half years old who's afraid of you ben john your brother and what is your brother why is your brother afraid of you because i hurt him so much okay and what at night time what do your parents do to your door get shot why do they lock it shut because they don't want me to hurt john right and they're kind of afraid of of hurting john are you hurting john okay are they afraid that you might hurt them yep during the session with the therapist beth was distant and jaded she seemed destined to be a murderer and lacking any ounce of empathy would you bet when would you do it right okay why would you do night time because i don't like don't say i make a way but they can kill me and what would you do to him beth okay what would you start with a knife dearest pins and people who my brother okay do you do it a little bit or a lot a lot okay and what are you trying to do to your brother why do you want your brother to die because i was hurt so bad and i don't want to be around people okay who else would you like to stick pins into mommy and daddy what would you like to have happen to them [Music] jesus could have lived to save israel yet chose to die to save the world tim is the minister of a small methodist church in the south he and his wife julie have been married for 12 years unable to have children of their own they decided to adopt in february of 1984 they received a call from the department of social services telling them they had two children available for adoption they were told that beth 19 months old and her brother jonathan seven months old were normal and healthy we did not need children to make our lives complete we felt secure in ourselves and securing our relationship but we wanted to share that with somebody else and we felt like we had a lot to pass on to a child and that was what we really wanted to do and when the phone call came it was like at last it's here it seemed like a miracle it happened so quick we'd heard of couples having to wait five ten years on a child and here we had two young children um it was like the answer to our dream their dream became a nightmare when they realized that beth and jonathan had severe emotional problems beth and her brother eric were children of a dysfunctional family his father was an alcoholic and his mother neglected early child rearing also passing away a year and a half after eric's birth they had an older sister but she was hardly home since she worked in a strip club her father sexually abused beth from birth to three years at which point social services took care of the children we had the kids with us beth and her younger brother john for uh probably a couple of months until we begin to learn something about their background and their past and when we learned it some things seem to fall in place about her behavior and john's behavior from several sources we discovered that that they didn't have enough food to eat that perhaps even beth went all day maybe with just a box of kick cereal john himself was found in a bassinet with little patches of urine all over it and a dirty diaper and a couple of bottles at his feet that had curdled milk and the back of his head was completely flat the front of his head had bulged out and at the seven months he couldn't raise his head couldn't roll over he was just had no stimulation and we think perhaps that happened to beth and it wasn't very long until she began showing some signs of perhaps even some abuse there was a nightmare that she had and the nightmare was about a man who was falling on her and hurting her with a part of himself tell me about your birth father what was that nightmare like when he touched not the tennis okay and talk lad hearted a lot until it lagged and um wouldn't be me a lot he'd hit on me wouldn't be very nice to me how old were you one and in your nightmare what happens i get real scared where are you in the nightmare what happens in the dream i'm in the house upstairs and then what happens then when he comes upstairs and um how do you feel when you talk about this scared where's your birth where's your birth father what's he doing he's right there and there's his hand his hands right there where right there you can't hardly see it because it's green what's it touching my vagina and what is your birth father doing hot nut your face looks uh sad can you tell me about that [Music] that's crying because there's thoughts of the tears when referring to the nightmares in which a man fell on her and hurt her beth implies that she was sexually assaulted by her father the repercussions of the abuse she had suffered as a child had led to uncontrollable anger [Music] beth had endured severe neglect and abuse as a child her birth mother died when she was one because of these early childhood experiences beth never developed a sense of conscience love or trust for anyone the early sexual abuse by her birth father would cause her to exhibit inappropriate sexual behavior especially toward her brother does your brother have private parts um yeah yeah what are what is his private parts penis and butts and what do you do with your brother with his private parts ben i heard it tell me about it what do you do well a pinch it um squeeze it kick it when you do things to your brother's private parts what does he say stop okay tell me that well he says stop but i don't stop do you hurt him a lot okay and would you like to do that to other boys when i caught her with jonathan one morning she was molesting him he was crying and his pants were down and i said beth what's happening and she said i pulled his penis and put my finger up his anus and i said didn't he say to stop and she said yeah i did and i said did you and she said no beth and her brother jonathan had lived alongside their biological father in a state of total abandonment also as a result of her pain beth sexually harassed her brother have you ever rubbed your private parts do you do it a lot a lot how much do you do that not every single day and let's see i did it every single day until it got well bad and messed up and i had to go to the doctor and i did not like it what what do you mean by real bad well it looked real raw got all kinds of boobies on it charms a lot of stuff from my hand and it bled she started to masturbate at inappropriate times um i remember one typically when we were at the hospital waiting for tim to come out he was there visiting and beth and john were in the back seat and i turned around and she had her legs spread and was masturbating in a public parking lot and i had tried to explain to her numerous times before that that that's private area you don't do it in public places and gone over that with her and and it never seemed to face her and um julie how often would your daughter masturbate daily constantly do you have animals beth four of them can you tell me their names cloudy shooky darcy and annie and daddy said um a day ago that um there was a stray cat he did not have a home so daddy is was taking care of it and took it to the vet when he started there when he had a flight to go and what do you do to the animals beth they come with pants do you stick them a little bit or a lot a lot what are you trying to do the animals path kill them what do they do when you stick them with the pins well annie cries she's a dog she got baby birds down out of the nest and we thought maybe she was just curious so we explained that she could hurt them um put them back and went through a hole sitting down and talking to her about the problem of it and the next day we went out to check the baby birds and they were on the ground dead with her their necks broken let's talk about what happened once when you were smaller when you when you found some baby birds in a tree what what did you do then i took them out and what did mom say to you um that the mother will not come back if somebody touches her babies are the baby birds kind of small can you describe them for me well they don't have their eyes open but they can hear hear me and they look up are they kind of helpless little baby birds can they fly well can they run away yes they can are they easy to catch or hard to catch yeah well it's hard to remember with the baby birds what did you do took them out of the food and what did you do with them right around too rough also when at the end i picked it up and i thought it was better and i came to say mommy is this bird dead and she said um she called daddy and said tim and um and then he came and um i think i'll remember that they said yes and so so the little baby birds die i don't know you don't remember i just remember that i think i remember what mommy and daddy saying the last bird boy got was dead do you know what mom said to me she said that all of them were dead did you squeeze him did baby best squeeze him you're doing a good job honey go ahead and tell me what happened i squished them and what happened i died beth also wanted to kill her parents with a knife and although she had never killed a human being she tortured family pets and even killed birds the way she says it means she is oblivious of the pain she inflicts on others but this kind of aggression and our animals and even our brother jonathan was beginning to to grow to such an excess that our life was miserable at home we had john would cry uh in the mornings and say his stomach hurt we for the longest time we thought maybe this child has uh has some problem with his intestinal area or maybe has allergies and so we're trying to get all that checked out come to find out beth was coming out of her room and hitting him in the stomach and so as a last resort just to protect him we had to tie our door shut so i guess for what the last three or four months now we've had to tie her in at night sort of barricade her other times the girl waited until her parents did not see her to hit her younger brother hard in the stomach in addition she was sticking pins into him the situation was unmanageable for the parents who could not control the girl to protect the brother they placed the latch on beth's room and locked her in at night to prevent her from continuing to do harm the repercussions of beth's tragic childhood led to uncontrollable rage despite the love and nurturing of her adoptive parents she took this rage out on herself on her brother and on them her acts of violence became more and more cruel and frightening well i noticed several uh like pairing knives in the kitchen missing and my first thought was beth and i felt a little guilty about it at first i thought no but um i really didn't even mention it to her they had been gone several weeks she was sitting at the table drawing and mentioned to me what do those knives look like that are gone mom and i said what knives fifth and she said weren't they kind of silver and about this big and um i knew then and then this little smile that's not not a sweet smile but a malicious type of smile and i knew then i thought she's got them tell me about the knives where did you get them from the drawer and where else do you remember tell me about it i got them from the dishwasher what kind of knives um and what do you want to do with those knives kill john and mommy with them and daddy beth frankly admits that she wishes to kill both her adoptive parents her acts of violence were increasingly cruel and chilling to the point where she now had the weapons to accomplish the killing and when mommy asks you about where the knives are what do you say i don't know what they are what did you think she might do with the knives my first thought was jonathan and the reason we thought that was that she had by this time she had tried to kill john on several occasions and openly admitted that in the basement she was hitting his head against a cement floor i heard his screams and ran down and had to literally pull her hands off and she looked wild-eyed did you get real mad at him did you hit his head real hard tell me about it how many times did you do it a lot what was the floor like clean up and what happened to your brother tell me about it his head hurt real bad but his chin he had to have stitches in it could you stop use your words back okay what was your brother doing when you were doing this what what the toys okay was he asking you to stop when you when you were doing it what was he saying he said stop and what did you do that didn't stop i just kept on hurting them what were you thinking when you were doing that thinking of killing them how did you stop what made you stop when i heard peter walking across the kitchen it made me stop because i thought mommy and daddy would come okay did mommy come what did she do she sent me to my mom okay um and what if mom didn't stop you what would you have done kept on doing it beth's outbursts of violence were directed especially against jonathan who on one occasion had to be hospitalized after the girl repeatedly hit his head on a concrete floor in an attempt to take his life if not for her parents this would certainly have happened it was clear now that beth had a psychological problem and what about after evaluating the extent of that psychological problems dr mcgidd felt that for the well-being of the family beth needed to be temporarily separated from them in april of 1989 her parents brought her to a special home of the expert at raising children with early attachment disorders especially children who are dangerous to themselves and others i have children that have killed numerous times cold-blooded family members neighbor children kill them and they can do it makes my blood run cold you think about nine years old people don't think a nine-year-old is capable of cold-blooded murder but they are that attachment break does severe damage to the heart the ability to care and the ability to love they don't care and they don't love they're capable of anything we're very strict very strict about everything everything is completely monitored we take complete control because a child who's unattached does not trust and because they don't trust they don't allow anybody to be boss of them so we take complete control they are not boss of anything they have to ask to get a drink of water they have to ask to go to the bathroom they have to ask to leave our site part of that is because we cannot trust them because of the damage that they've done before worried about the situation her adoptive parents tried to help her in different ways and took her to countless specialists the aggressions were incessant to the point that it was impossible to continue a healthy life everything changed when they met the therapist ken maggot a clinical psychologist specializing in abused children and victims of serious abuse so traumatized during the first years of life that they do not establish emotional ties with other people the doctor worked with children who could not accept love who had no conscience and who could hurt and even kill without remorse the proposal was an intensive behavior modification therapy and part of the sessions with beth were recorded and formed part of the documentary after assessing the extent of beth's psychological problems the specialist decided that it was best to separate her from the rest of the family in april 1989 the girl was taken to a specialized residence for children with attachment disorders that are danger to themselves and others there beth lived with minors who had murdered in cold blood the therapy consisted of imposing extreme restrictions beth had to ask permission for everything including drinking water and going to the bathroom part of the goal was to rebuild beth's self-esteem so that she perceived herself as a person of value beth would you like to say grace please generally father thank you for this good day and everybody doing good in jesus name amen believe that they're evil they believe they're from the devil they believe that they are not a person of value and we have to change that and we have to build that from a child who's nothing who's a bad kid in their own mind to a child who's valuable and loving and they see themselves as that [Music] you don't have to bite this when they do it you're well we can say you did a good job you're a good worker and then it just builds that self-esteem little by little so that they change the way that they see themselves several months into treatment in this controlled environment beth had made progress and her therapist decided to loosen some of the controls [Music] that continued to show signs of improvement she began to develop a sense of right and wrong she seemed to respond to affection it was more outgoing she went to public school made friends at the local church and even sang in the choir and you're going to go into sunday school again yeah get stickers maybe you could put one on your nose [Music] yeah it's a beard she's beard here's his nose [ __ ] yeah see his beard is kind of flowing in the wind and everything well that's that's where that's elisha that's the other prophet that took elijah's place and he was left and there's elijah you know and he learned about sheep and the lord is my shepherd march 3rd you just got that yesterday huh [Music] in the beginning we couldn't trust her with anything she was locked up at night we had alarms on the door at night so she wasn't sneaking around doing things with the other children we don't worry about that anymore there's no alarm on her door at night now she sleeps in the same room with my own daughter and i trust her that much she brushes the dogs and i trust her that much because she has earned that trust she's learned it she's she has a heart and she has a love inside and she feels bad when she does something now in the past because she didn't have a conscience she didn't feel anything when she did something bad there was just no feeling there and now she does feel bad and it shows in her face i believe that beth can make it she's got a really bright mind she's got a good heart now which has done a lot of healing she's got a really super set of parents they're powerful they're knowledgeable they're motivated she's done a lot of good work with you in therapy with canal and with myself she wants to heal and that's the number one key and she wants to heal because she has a family that really cares about her and she wants to be with her animal therapy also helped her empathize in the controlled environment beth was showing signs of improvement was even beginning to develop a differentiation between good and bad at home she also had to feed various farm animals and seemed to respond to affection she laughed and interacted with other living beings and even hugged her therapist gradually beth began to have more contact with other children was sent to school became friends at church and began participating in a choir with less than a year of therapy beth's attitude changed radically do you know where that anger came from that's when my birthday um hurt me i had it all inside and i remembered it and i started doing it and what did what did that do when it was inside it made me want to hurt people really bad and who did you hurt my brother my mom and dad and animals and animals where did it hurt the most my brother me why don't you tell me that it hurt it hurt me the most how did it hurt you the most because when i hurt other people um it had only been a couple of months since beth had admitted that her wish was to murder her brother and her parents but the change was resounding the girl expressed regret for how she had treated her brother she no longer harmed herself and lamented for having hurt people after passing through the residence beth began to feel empathy and regretted having herded our loved ones i'm burning my dead itself how you feel right now it's kind of tough to talk about isn't it [Music] beth gave her last interview from this film in december of 1989 although she had made progress she would still need extensive therapy not all abused children are as deeply scarred as beth but all abused children suffer a profound hurt for the rest of their lives the road to recovery is long and hard for the abused child there are more than one million new victims of child abuse in america every year [Music] over the years we can see beth as a person with the capacity to empathize and to be aware of the consequences of her actions obviously her apparent evil had its genesis in the continued abuse of which she was a victim as a baby and her case serves to illustrate the dire consequences of physical and psychological abuse at a young age currently beth leads a normal life and works as a nurse her professional merits have earned her several awards this case leads us to the following conclusions the importance of good parenting especially in critical periods of the child but it also tells us about the effectiveness at least in this case of psychological therapy even in cases of extreme gravity and that may seem irreconcilable this total psychological recovery of small beth could be achieved by raising awareness to the child about their actions to mend their self-esteem and build the habits and social behavior functional for example getting to accept certain standards and to manage channel and understand the reason for their anger you

Channel: Stranger Stories

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Keywords: true crime, crime psychology, stranger stories, full interrogation, police interrogations, jcs, jcs inspired, confession tapes, crime, psychology, police, footage, jcs like, true crime documentary, forensic psychology, crime documentary, documentary, investigation, criminal psychology, interrogation, beth thomas, crazy child

Id: UNMUFlpIero

Length: 33min 24sec (2004 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 25 2021