Brutal Treatment, Vicious Deeds

By Jon D. Hull/Los Angeles

High School Cheerleader Cheryl Pierson had often fantasized about having her father killed. Her resentment and rage came to a head one day in November 1985 when Pierson and Classmate Sean Pica, both then 16, were sitting in homeroom at Newfield High School in Selden, N.Y., discussing an article in a local paper about an abused wife who enlisted someone to murder her husband. Pierson wondered aloud who would be crazy enough to undertake such a deadly commission. Pica promptly said he would volunteer -- if the price was right. Three months later, as James Pierson, a 42-year-old electrician, left his Long Island home for work one morning, Pica shot him five times with a .22-cal. rifle.

Both Pica and Pierson pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Pica was sentenced in April to eight to 24 years in prison. But Pierson argued that years of sexual abuse had pushed her over the brink. Last week, a judge sentenced her to six months in jail and five years' probation. "This is not a place I want to be in, but nothing could compare to what I went through," she said last week at , the Suffolk County Correctional Facility. "I just couldn't see any other way out."

Pierson is one of the 300 or so children each year across the U.S. who murder one or both of their parents. Fathers are most often the victims. In recent years the frequency of such crimes, which account for just under 2% of all U.S. homicides, has remained stable, but the legal tactics used to defend the youthful killers have changed. More and more children are arguing that they acted in self-defense, admitting readily to the crime but pointing to years of abuse that left them fearful for their lives. As awareness of child abuse has increased, experts maintain that these pleas are hitting a responsive chord among sympathetic juries. Says Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney and parricide expert: "Courts are finally waking up to the problem. Kids just don't take these actions unless something is very, very wrong."

Sociz ("Johnny") Junatanov, who worked in his father's restaurant, hired a thug in 1985 to kill his father. When the knife-wielding assailant failed, Junatanov's girlfriend crept into the hospital disguised as a nurse and injected the wounded victim with battery acid. That attempt also failed. Junatanov lined up another contract killer to finish the job -- but this time the hired assassin was an undercover Los Angeles police officer. Junatanov, 20, landed in jail. Last year a jury in Los Angeles acquitted him of all charges after hearing lurid testimony of years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse by his father. "The jurors came up and hugged him," says Defense Attorney Joel Isaacson.

In 1984 Robert Ludwig Jr., 17, killed his father, a Boston cabdriver, with six hatchet blows to the head. Last March he received a suspended sentence of nine to 15 years after friends and neighbors rallied around the youth and a court psychiatrist testified that Ludwig's was the worst case of abuse he had ever seen. Astonishingly, Ludwig initially denied he had been abused. "Kids are so ashamed," explains Bellevue Psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis. "They even try to convince outsiders they deserved the beatings." Says Mones: "These kids are like prisoners of war. They can't think straight anymore."

Psychologists have long known that brutal treatment can breed brutal behavior. Child abuse is one of the most common precursors of juvenile delinquency. Severe beatings can cause central nervous system dysfunction that may lead to violent behavior. Attorney Mones says well over 90% of children who commit parricide have suffered physical, sexual and mental abuse. Unlike thousands of other severely abused children, they are finally tipped into violent retaliation by extreme distress or the opening of an opportunity. After testing, most are found to be suicidal; indeed, many attempt suicide within six months of the murder.

The number of youths arrested for all types of murder jumped 9%, to 1,396, between 1985 and 1986. While many of these youths have criminal records and drug habits that may influence their behavior, Mones estimates that less than 10% of parricide defendants have any previous record. "In the parricide cases, the kids are rarely high," he says. And the vast majority of parricides are premeditated. The typical modus operandi: several shots to the back of the head of a sleeping parent.

Their lawyers face a formidable task: justifiable homicide is difficult to prove. Defense attorneys must first convince juries that severe abuse took place, then demonstrate why the defendants felt they had no other options. Pierson, a quiet and somewhat immature teenager, says her 240-lb. father began sexually abusing her when she was about eleven, progressing until he was having sexual intercourse with her as often as three times a day. She claimed that he even molested her in the car on the way to the hospital to visit her mother, who died in 1985. "It was awful," she says. "I felt hopeless."

Despite her anguish, Pierson never once sought help from any adult. Prosecutor Edward Jablonski and others are worried that sentences as lenient as Pierson's might prompt other abused children to seek revenge. More frightening is the possibility that some unbalanced children may use alleged abuse as a pretext for killing their parents. Says Judge Vincent J. Femia of Upper Marlboro, Md., who has handled several parricide cases: "In effect, the defendant can argue that he did something that should have been done for the community."

In the Pierson case, Defense Attorney Paul Gianelli contended that Cheryl was spurred to action because she was afraid her father might also abuse her sister, then nine years old. Pierson feared for her own life as well. "Her father threatened to kill her if she did anything," says the attorney. Although there was never any physical evidence, neighbors and friends testified that they suspected abuse but were afraid to speak out. Says Gianelli: "It all fell on the lap of a 16-year-old." And it was a problem that finally proved too much to bear.