Delusions & madness: just another day at the office

Let me tell you how my day started.

We start work at 8:30. Around 8:45 I got a call from a patrol sergeant. He asked if we could meet one of his officers at the hospital and assist with a possible child abuse investigation.

The call had started just before 8:00 when mom, holding her 1-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, waved down one of our civilian community service cars and began yelling for help. She said her husband had been shot, and there was blood everywhere. She was standing in a parking lot about a half mile from her apartment when she said this. She was agitated, and she also said her husband had killed himself, or was suicidal. Or had been stabbed. She wasn't clear.

Officers went to the apartment and found her 7-year-old daughter there, dressed for school. No bodies, no blood, no dead or suicidal husband. It was clear mom needed some medical attention, and our fire department took her to the hospital. Once she got there she told our officer and an ER nurse that dad had sex with two of their children because she (mom) was "fat and ugly". That's when I got called.

I got to the hospital and found the father. He was an odd fellow--he reminded me of a Filipino Peter Lorre, with a collection of tics just this side of Parkinson's. The couple isn't legally married, but have the three kids in common and have lived together nearly 10 years. Dad said she "has not felt good" since having the most recent baby, but he didn't want to use words like "depression" or "mental illness". He said she wanted to see a therapist, but he didn't want her to because it's frowned upon "in our culture". He did not elaborate. He did not know the exact birth dates of any of their three children.

The hospital had a social worker looking after the kids in another room. The kids looked ok. They were clean and didn't seem too upset, given the circumstances. The 7-year-old was a smart, beautiful little girl, and sharp, too. She said mom "didn't feel good" this morning. I asked her how she knew that, and she replied that mom spent the morning on the couch, screaming and talking to herself after dad left for work. You could tell that the kid spends a lot of time taking care of her siblings while mom is "not feeling good"; at one point the 1-year-old started crying, and the older girl picked her up like a pro. The baby stopped crying instantly.

The first thing mom asked when I was introduced to her was "did you see the body?" It went downhill from there. She said her husband put "something" in her vagina, "to make it tight, or kill me." She didn't know what the object was, and had not looked herself. She seemed relieved when I told her that the hospital staff would check on that for her. She didn't remember saying anything about her children, and didn't repeat the allegation about the sexual abuse. Mom seemed pretty happy to be in the hospital.

Ultimately there was no indication that anyone had harmed the children. We've never been to the residence before on domestics, and neither adult had a rap sheet. The officer did a social service referral, and DCFS will do whatever it is that they do in the next couple of days. It looks like what we saw was the end result of a year's worth of untreated postpartum depression. For whatever reason, mom reached the end of her line this morning and just snapped. Hopefully she'll get some help now.