“These parents have, by and large, chosen to love their children, and many of them have chosen to value their own lives, even though they carry what much of the world considers an intolerable burden. Children with horizontal identities alter your self painfully; they also illuminate it.” -Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.
In September 2017, an unfortunate event had occurred, a mother was killed in her own home in Bandung, Indonesia. The only witness that morning was his own child, Abraham (not a real name).
Abraham, is not the ordinary 16 year-old teenager, a children of special needs (read.autism spectrum) that lives with his father in different city, his parents are divorced two years prior the incident.
During the interrogation as a witness, the psychiatrist told the media, Abraham was an aggressive teen each time he was being questioned in regard to his mother. The aggression was toward himself, and quite difficult for him to control his hysterical behavior related to how he felt concerning the relationship with his mother. Elly in raising Abraham often treated him as a little child, considering his condition, and it made him felt anxious.
Before the tragedy, Abraham spent four days taking trips with Elly (not a real name), trains, going back and forth between Jakarta and Bandung, and the night before the murder, they went to see The Nun , a horror-genre movie.
The next morning Abraham called out his mother in slurred vocals outside the house , with hands covered in blood and holding a knife, caught Elly’s neighbors in shock. Later the police came and confirmed the death Elly, 42 years old with 28 jabs of knife in her remains, including left shoulder and left eye. Found also hand-scratching marks in Abraham’s wrists, the authorities immediately conducted a lab test for the swab. A kitchen knife were found as murder weapon.
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There was no sign of breaking and entering, the house was properly locked from the inside, and no stolen possessions or property that indicates a robbery.
Victim was also known as quite an attractive lady wearing a Moslem veil, working as a bank clerk and had lived her private life in solemn.
After a thorough investigation of nearly 20 witnesses,the authorities had finally conclude one suspect with an undisclosed identity. The law prohibits the suspect to be revealed in public.
The Nun
By the time the case was all over the news I decided to take a look of what really intrigues the mother to take her son to watch such horrific theme movie that night before the murder.
Full volume and dim lighting in my room might not fueled the same atmosphere as inside the theater but it was the best I can keep up to create similar sensories effect.
The first scene was opened with a suicide of a nun in 1952, hanging herself out of fears on top of a monastery castle’s tower. What followed is a series of startling visual and sound effects of horrifying nuns, child demon and others that can occasionally drives you to be frightened.
Most of the demons are nuns, that even some of them are in a form normal human beings. One that I find gripping is that Sister Oana, one of the character in the movie died with blood-teary eyes.
There are also 2 or 3 ambush scenes, and among those contained violence act of stabbing with a cross, strangling and drowning a nun underwater.
Alas, perhaps Elly’s decision to pleased his son’s choice of movie has led her to a dismay?
How Deep is Your Love.
As benevolent as it might seem, an act of taking a custody of special needs children for a father, it is a challenge and can be considered unusual.
In average cases, the law accordance with the respective religion of the family. A child in minor age (under 12 years old) under normal circumstances—the mother is still alive and able,will have to be their mother’s responsibility.
Elly and her husband divorce took place by the time Abraham reaches the age of 13years old, which leaves the decision to the child’s preference. Though Abraham choses to live with his father under certain circumstances, he still get acquainted with his mother every weekend or during the holidays.
Abraham allegedly had being driven to specific treatment for the past 1-year (since 2017), at West Java Mental Hospital in order to tackle his disability of controlling his emotions, speech therapy and assessing his learning difficulties. The psychiatrist,Lelly Resna told the media that during the treatment process, patient (read: Abraham) needed to be medicated routinely to subside the potential tantrums.
Did Elly were informed regarding his son challenges of growing up ? Or, she didn’t know how far did the impact of the movie able to stimulates an unstable teenager with emotional disabilities?
Listening is everything, including about your child, More about listening, read it here.
We conclude a journal report from The Pediatric Research of Sensory Processing in Autism: A Review of Neurophysiologic Findings by Elysa Jill Marco, Leighton Barett Nicholas Hinkley, Susanna Shan Hill, and Srikantan Subramanian Nagarajan how much would aggressive behaviour can be trigerred, as well as being avoided in prolific cases :
Over 96% of children with ASD report hyper and hypo-sensitivities in multiple domains of sensory processing. Similar to the wide-range of spectrum severity found for communication and social deficits, sensory behavioral differences also range from mild to severe, and these behavioral differences can endure through adulthood.
There are also other category at DSM-IV which said to have similar and more specific features on Abraham, which called Conduct Disorder (CD). Healthychildren.org informed that :
A child with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) and CD does have a greater chance of experiencing learning disabilities such as reading disorders and verbal impairment. But what distinguishes children with ODD (oppositional deviant disorder) and CD most from children with ADHD alone is their defiant, resistant, even (in the case of CD) aggressive, cruel, or delinquent, behavior.
May Elly rest in peace, and while the lesson she gave took us to learned the hard way, it was an enormous and profound effect of changing our environment into a more vigilant society,particularly parents.
Marco, E. J., Hinkley, L. B., Hill, S. S., & Nagarajan, S. S. (2011). Sensory processing in autism: a review of neurophysiologic findings. Pediatric research, 69(5 Pt 2), 48R-54R.
Author: Fraya
A writer and entrepreneur with profound interest in humankind research and insights. An avid coffee drinker and book hoarder. Hours and days spent in Jakarta.