Four-year old Christina Johnson went shopping for draperies with her mother in Charleston, West Virginia. As she and her mother exited the doorway, two men approached; one of the men allegedly grabbed her mother's arm and propelled two back into the store. Christina began to cry and clutched her mother's shoulder. The men told Christina's mother to "keep her kid quiet." A curtain valence valued at $6 was allegedly discovered in her bag.
Christina's mother requested that she be permitted to telephone her husband so he could pick up their upset daughter. She was allegedly told, "No. It's not our problem. You stole this, shut up, sit down." Christina was then taken to the police station and watched while her mother was fingerprinted, photographed, and charged with shoplifting.
According to Chris Pyles of Charleston, West Virginia, attorney for Hills Department Store, charges were not pressed against Mrs. Johnson. He told The Forensic Echo that "Hills had a 100% enforcement policy on shoplifting. However, the police may not prosecute on a $6 offense."
The child watched while her mother was fingerprinted, photographed, and charged with shoplifting.
In the days that followed, Christina began to suffer from panic attacks. She had difficulty with peers at school and with her sibling. On behalf of her daughter, Mrs. Johnson sued the store for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
At the close of trial, the store argued that Mrs. Johnson had failed to prove that the employee's conduct was intentional and outrageous enough to rise to the legal level necessary to prove the emotional distress claim. The judge granted a directed verdict on behalf of the store that was upheld on the first appeal. Mrs. Johnson continued her quest for justice on Christina's behalf to the highest court in West Virginia.
Holding: The directed verdict was upheld. The store's conduct resulted in an "unpleasant experience" for the child, but the behavior of the employees did not rise to the level of outrageousness required to sustain the claim. The court defended its demand for strict proof of extreme misconduct: "[t]he tort of outrage is a slippery beast, which can easily get out of hand without firm judicial oversight."
Editor's Note: New York City has recently implemented an aggressive policy of arresting parents for what child welfare experts claim are minor instances of neglect, such as living in substandard housing, fighting in front of the children, spanking a young child or leaving older children home alone. The children are taken from the home and placed in foster care. Advocates are concerned that child welfare officials have not considered the damage such arrests might inflict on witnessing children.
In the above-described case, Attorney Pyles told The Forensic Echo that, in his opinion, the court took this case to clarify what is not emotional distress. He said, "These facts are determined on a case by case basis, and we argued that, even if everything the plaintiff said was true, the Hills employees were just rude."
| Rayna Rogers, D.O. Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry Univeristy of California |
Dr. Rogers comments: A child can be traumatized by witnessing the arrest of his or her parent. Young children look to their primary care givers to determine how they should feel in a given situation. If the mother shows fear, the infant will become distressed and fearful. Beyond this emotional mirroring effect, older children experience feelings derived from their own immature interpretations, which may be quite irrational.
Children in the four-to-eight year age group tend to have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. In addition, they tend to be very punitive and extreme in their notions of punishment. For example, a typical six-year-old might say that a person who accidentally hurts someone else should be locked up "forever" or even be put to death. A child this young cannot understand the concept of intentionality.
Conversely, a child in this age group who witnesses the arrest of his or her parent is likely to anticipate that severe punishment will be inflicted upon the parent, perhaps taking that parent away "forever." I recently evaluated a seven-year-old boy who was a passenger in the family car when his father was arrested for drunk driving. He watched the police officer put his father in handcuffs, put him into the squad car, and drive away. The child explained to me that he believed his father would be taken "to the electric chair" and would never be seen again. Clearly, this was traumatic to the child. However, it was not nearly as traumatic as seven years of exposure to a drunken father.
Far greater harm would have come to my patient if his father had not been stopped by the arrest and instead crashed the car. Law enforcement should perhaps not be blamed for harm to children arising from an arrest if a parent placed that child at risk by engaging in criminal conduct. Moral harm is done to a child who learns from a parent that laws do not have to be obeyed.
Still, law enforcement officials should be more sensitive to the vulnerability of children trapped in situations involving law-breaking behavior by their parents. But it may be completely unworkable to demand that they do so, and whether their failure is grounds for recovery for financial damages is a matter for law, not psychiatry.
