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Krystal Tibbetts
Killed as a result of Attachment Therapy
July 7, 1995
3 years old
Articles:
Victim of Attachment Therapy Midvale, Utah
Man Seeks Ban on Therapy He Used on Daughter
Victim of Attachment Therapy
Midvale, Utah
By Jeremy Harmon, Deseret News
Donald Lee Tibbets in 2002 Despite
his professional training as a registered
nurse, he did not notice that his
adopted daughter had stopped
breathing while he was performing
a commonly used AT technique in
1995. He subsequently served a
full 5-year prison term for her death.
“It makes me sick to my stomach to
even think that I did this,” Donald Tibbets, a former registered
nurse, told the Salt Lake Tribune.
What Tibbets did was what he says
he and his wife had been taught to do — performing as
“co-therapists” — by Attachment Therapy (AT) practitioner Lawrence
VanBloem and the Family Attachment Center (later to become the
Cascade Center) in Orem, Utah. He was taught to lie across his
3-year-old adopted daughter, Krystal — who weighed only 35 pounds —
in what is known in AT circles as “compression therapy,” and to push
his fist into her abdomen, which is one technique of “visceral
manipulation” (VM). Both VanBloem and Tibbets’s ex-wife have denied
his allegations, according to court records.
On 7 July 1995, Krystal defied
Tibbets, so he laid her down in the hallway of the family’s Midvale,
Utah, home. According to transcripts, Tibbets pushed his fist into
the girl’s stomach for 15 minutes. During the session, Krystal
vomited before she stopped breathing. She died the next day in a
hospital.
In prior VM sessions, Tibbets told
the Deseret News, Krystal would scream, lose bowel and bladder
control, and even vomit. Tibbets said he wrongly believed that she
had “shut down” when she stopped screaming. “By the time I realized
she was in trouble, it was too late,” he said in an interview with
the Salt Lake Tribune.
A medical examiner concluded that
Krystal died from suffocation and had blunt force trauma to her
abdomen. The death cost Tibbets his marriage, his family, his
profession, and his freedom for a time.
AT advocates claim that Tibbets is
a man just trying to shift the blame for his misdeeds. Tibbets, who
already has served the full 5-year sentence he was given, denies
that. “I’ll always have pain. I still go though a lot of pain,”
Tibbets told the News, adding that the guilt he went through in
prison was immense. He told a legislative committee shortly after
being released from prison that he accepts his errors and guilt for
what he did to Krystal. He says he seeks now to assure that others,
especially those seeking to escape responsibility, will not do
things that lead to another death.
“I blame the therapist for
continuing to be irresponsible in teaching this [AT], knowing what
happened to Krystal and now [that] it’s happened to somebody else,”
Tibbets added.
Man Seeks Ban on Therapy He Used
on Daughter
The Salt Lake Tribune
Date: 09/29/2002
Man Seeks Ban on Therapy He Used on Daughter
BY JACOB SANTINI THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Only weeks after his release from prison last winter, Donald Tibbets
appeared before the state Legislature to urge lawmakers to ban
coercive holding therapy -- the technique he was using on his
adopted daughter when she died. Time ran out before the proposal got
an airing. So the former Midvale resident, who served 5 years in
prison for his 3-year-old daughter Krystal Ann's death, will be back
before lawmakers this winter to lobby for some of the toughest
restrictions on coercive therapy techniques in the nation.
"It makes me sick to my stomach to even think that I did this," said
Tibbets, a former registered nurse.
Once known as rage reduction therapy, the technique in general
consists of holding a child down as fingers, fists or elbows are
pushed into the abdomen to get the child to vent suppressed rage. It
is an outdated, though not illegal, treatment for children diagnosed
with attachment disorder. There are no regulated standards or
certification that guide therapists using the technique.
"I knew it was controversial," Tibbets said in a telephone interview
from his Cheyenne, Wyo., home. "I didn't know it would cause a
death."
Coercive therapy has come under renewed scrutiny following the
recent death of a 4-year-old Springville girl. Investigators allege
that Cassandra Killpack died June 10 after her adoptive parents
forced her to drink a fatal amount of water; her hands allegedly had
been tied behind her back during the incident.
The Killpacks, charged with child abuse homicide and child abuse,
claim they were acting as directed by therapist Larry VanBloem,
director of the Cascade Center for Family Growth in Orem -- an
allegation VanBloem denies. The therapist also treated Krystal
Tibbets.
In a subsequent but separate investigation from the Killpack case,
VanBloem and colleague Jennie Murdock Gwilliam acknowledged to the
Department of Occupational and Professional Licensing that they used
"compression holding therapy" and "deep tissue massage" on some
child clients.
The department filed a 14-count licensing complaint accusing the two
of ethical and professional violations, including physically and
mentally abusing clients, gross incompetence and unprofessional
conduct. The two social workers have maintained they are the targets
of a witch hunt in which the division misrepresented innocuous
client reports.
Rep. Mike Thompson, R-Orem, sponsor of last year's bill, says the
new version of his "coercive restraint therapy" legislation would
prohibit licensed therapists from performing or suggesting any type
of coercive restraint techniques on children.
The bill would result in a ban on compression holding, rage
reduction and rebirthing therapies.
"What this is talking about is child abuse," said Thompson, whose
bill already has been endorsed by the Child Welfare Oversight Panel.
Thompson's proposal expands licensing repercussions, but does not
include criminal penalties since existing child abuse laws would
apply. The Department of Occupational and Professional Licensing (DOPL)
says the bill would strengthen its ability to go after the licenses
of abusive therapists, Thompson said.
A review of action in recent years by DOPL found at least one
therapist in the state who has been disciplined for, among other
things, using an abusive form of holding therapy.
Therapy administered by Craig Ramsey, a marriage and family
therapist, between 1993 and January 2001, involved "restraining
clients and administering verbal and physical abuse," according to
licensing records. Ramsey's license was placed on probation for five
years in January, precluding him from providing "counseling,
psychotherapy, or any form of treatment."
In an interview, VanBloem acknowledged that the Cascade center is
practicing therapies that probably would violate Thompson's
proposal. But, he contends, none of the practices causes pain or
restricts a child's breathing or other functions. Sometimes children
are restrained to prevent them from hurting themselves or others, he
said.
VanBloem declined to detail therapies used or discontinued at his
center, saying only that the industry has refined treatment for the
reactive attachment disorder over the years.
"We have become milder and milder in our approach in therapy as
we've found alternatives that are just as effective," he said.
Tibbets says VanBloem taught him to lie across Krystal, who weighed
35 pounds, and to push his fist into her abdomen -- a contention
VanBloem as well as Tibbets' ex-wife denies, according to court
records.
Tibbets said on July 7, 1995, Krystal defied him, so he laid her
down in the hallway of the family's Midvale home. According to
transcripts from his parole hearing, Tibbets pushed his fist into
the girl's stomach for 15 minutes. During the session, Krystal
vomited before she stopped breathing. She died the next day in a
hospital.
In prior treatments, Tibbets said, Krystal would "shut down" and
stop reacting to the pressure. Tibbets said he believed that is what
she had done when she stopped screaming. "By the time I realized she
was in trouble it was too late," he said.
A medical examiner concluded that Krystal died from suffocation and
had blunt force trauma to her abdomen.
Elsewhere, the Colorado Legislature unanimously banned rebirthing
therapy following the death of Candace Newmaker, 10, of North
Carolina, who had been brought by her mother to the state for
treatment in 2000. The two therapists who treated her are serving
16-year prison sentences.
Steven Jensen, the lead prosecutor in the Newmaker case, is running
for a seat in the Colorado Senate. If elected, he said he plans to
pursue a bill requiring therapists to videotape treatment sessions
with children.
The new push for stricter regulations in Utah has some worried that
if the practices are outlawed, coercive restraint therapies will
simply move underground. "These treatments are being done in the
dark corners of the mental health system," Christopher Barden, a
North Salt Lake psychologist and attorney who testified in the
Newmaker case, told a Utah legislative panel earlier this month.
Ronald Federici, a Washington, D.C.-based developmental
neuropsychologist who specializes in treating post-institutionalized
children, says that lax licensing standards allow therapists to
conduct treatments for which they have no formal training or
qualifications.
Thompson knows his bill will be opposed by some national groups and
families who support holding therapies that don't include inflicting
pain on children -- but he is confident the measure will be
approved.
Opposition already is forming.
" Who defines what coercive is?" asked Charly Risenmay, the
president of Utah-based Safe Adoptive Families for Children at Risk
Emotionally (SAFFCARE) and opponent of Thompson's first bill. "Who
defines what restraint is?"
While Thompson's bill says "coercive restraint does not include
briefly holding, without undue force, a patient in order to calm a
patient," Risenmay said she fears that the proposal would prohibit
parents from simply hugging or cuddling a child while in therapy.
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