Unmaking a Monster
“In August 2006, I pled guilty to third-degree child assault after physically abusing my infant daughter in late 2005,” Jeremiah Donier writes in an email. “In black and white this sounds absolutely monstrous to me.” It doesn’t just sound monstrous, Donier says over the phone. “When I talk about it, it scares me,” Donier says. He’d never been a violent man, but had always been an angry one. He’d stuff down his emotions, like his dad taught him, until they came boiling over. Donier wasn’t addicted to drugs, wasn’t living in poverty, but he was incredibly overwhelmed. Visit Inlander.com to read about And when stress piles on stress David Smith’s journey: escaping without relief, studies show, the abuse and neglect as a child, danger of child abuse increases. only to care for foster children By now, he says, the details of his own. have blurred. But he remembers feeling absolutely terrified to be raising an infant daughter. He remembers working 40 hours a week for Spokane County, coming home exhausted to a wife who was falling apart and to a daughter who kept crying and crying. He wasn’t getting any sleep, and he didn’t know what to do or who to turn to or how to handle it or how to get her to shut up. So he’d lash out. He’d spank her, and worse. Then came that snowy day just after Thanksgiving, when the doctor found bruising on his infant daughter’s abdomen and ear. “I probably boxed her ear or did something,” Donier says. “I was tired that day. I don’t remember.” At Sacred Heart Medical Center, X-rays revealed broken ribs. “I didn’t realize that,” Donier says. “I squeezed my daughter so tight that I broke a couple of ribs. I didn’t realize I was so capable of being so angry.” Facing a felony, he lost his job. CPS took his little girl away, sending her to a foster home. “It did send me into bankruptcy. It did send me into despair,” Donier says. “[But] it’s not the end of the road.” For 20 hours a week, Donier met with his daughter, under intense supervision, at a house in Browne’s Addition that had been converted into a place for parents to reconnect with the children they’d lost. He’d play with his child, and staff members would give him feedback, teaching him how to understand what his daughter needed. Counselors dipped deep into his psyche and his past, unearthing reasons for his anger. Finally, after 13 months, after decorating his house with Christmas lights, he brought his daughter home. “I want other men to know, other parents to know,” Donier says. “You have to get ahold of who you are and deal with your past.” In 2009, he co-founded a program called the Spokane Parent Advocacy Network, a support group for parents involved with CPS. Those in the field, however, stress that teaching “parenting” takes an extraordinary amount of time and resources. “It’s not an information issue. It’s not: ‘Don’t leave the baby alone in the bathtub.’ It’s an emotional regulation issue,” says ...continued on next page
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