I for one can't get her out of my mind. I dreamed about Jani last night....

Not to start a debate, and correct me if I am wrong, but didn't her dad clarify the "starvation" issue by explaining that what they acutally did was serve her healthier foods that she refused? In other words, doctors recommended that the family not cater to her picky eating habits (this was before they knew the extent of her illness) by serving her the same food that everyone else was eating. That is actually pretty standard and sensible advice from professionals (of course, the situation is different when you are dealing with children who have picky eating habits due to something else than simply "I like cake instead of vegetables"). But that hardly constitutes "starvation." To me, that would actually mean serving her no food whatsoever. I never read anything on the father's blog that indicated that this is what the family did at any time. And furthermore, when the family felt that this approach to eating habits was ineffective, they changed their approach.

Again, I am not picking a side. It just seems worth getting the facts straight when you are accusing a father of starving his child. Starving a child by denying her all food, and a child subsequently "starving" because she is not eating the healthy foods that you are serving her, is not exactly the same kind of starvation.

Philip Dawdy responds: i think he did clarify the "starving" bit, but not the hitting bit.

This story interests me because it's a tragedy, a child in distress, and parents who are either sadistic and deliberately harming their child or destroying her with the advice and support of psychiatry.

Of course as someone has written here, if Jani gets child's ssi then dad has a bit more money to write and he thinks of himself as a literary genius with an important voice.

Meanwhile, once one is labeled mentally ill, all one's actions are deemed harmful and dangerous and all of the actions of others are deemed helpful and self defense. So when Jani's father writes, and then as a de facto confession that it's abuse, removes this bit from his blog:

"...Hitting her back (I won't tell you how many people told us that all she needed was a good beating). We took all her toys away. We gave her toys away. We tried starving her. We did EVERYTHING we could to try and break her. Nothing worked."

It doesn't even occur to him he'll be called out for beating and starving a 2 year old because in his mind and the mind of his sympathetic readers (and Oprah/barf) she's not human anymore, she's a schizophrenic monster and unlike the normal humans, beating her and starving her should make her "saner." If it wouldn't work for you, gentle reader, and Ky, why the h*ll should it work for this poor kid?

The good news is that this guy has been investigated several times for child abuse and that the system screwed up though it is seems wary of institutionalizing his child. The bad news is the kid is in this miserable situation force fed brain dissolving drugs and physically abused by parents with an entitlement mentality and no sense whatsoever of personal responsibility.

The father has written that all relatives on both sides disapprove of how he and Jani's mother are treating the child. Maybe one of them can take Jani.

Ky,
To refer to serving a sensible diet as starving someone is certainly pretty histrionic and quite in keeping with this father's general tone. Which feels pretty icky to me.

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.januaryfirst.org/Blog/Entries/2009/5/2_Entry_1.html

That entry on the father's blog discusses how he attempted to throw the wife from a moving vehicle, etc in his rage and anger, plus more.

It's a very eye opening blog entry, one of many that if read, one can conclude many things about Michael Schofield, and one is that he is in fact a Domestic Violence poster child(man).

Sherry,

Well, I imagine that because Jani was not eating, and losing weight, that the father essentially felt like he was starving her. And my guess, although I certainly have not asked him to clarify, is that the dramatic use of the word "starvation" was likely intended to be more of a criticism of the professionals who insisted that the family take this approach to Jani's eating habits without taking into account that there might be something more significant going on there.

For the record, Sally, I don't share the unconditional open mind to this father that some others do. I simply think that it makes a more productive discussion when the facts are on the table. The truth is that most of us are only going by what the father has said on his blog. And I admit that some of it is concerning. The "starvation" bit, once clarified by the father, does not concern me. The hitting, well, I certainly cannot condone it. To be balanced, however, I did not get the impression that the father was ever asking anyone to condone it. He admits that he made mistakes.

The issue that acutally concerns ME quite a bit is the issue of Jani's privacy. And this is why I will no longer read the father's blog. I am pretty damn uncomfortable with the idea of parents making their young daughter's mental illness, behaviors, "episodes," and personal details national business. I applaud anyone for encouraging understanding and acceptance of mental illness, but that doesn't mean that her parents should be able to intrude on Jani's privacy by making her case the conversation of millions of people at the dinner table post-Oprah. I appreciate a lot of what Jani's father says, but his credibility is definitely in question with me. Not because of comments on his blog that may or may not mean this or that. But because he seems to not have given much thought to how a teenager Jani or an adult Jani might feel about everyone knowing the intimate details of her life.

Concerning Jani's privacy raised in a comment above, the father and mother pretty much removed that from all of their lives by appearing on the OPRAH show.

I also have a problem with his credibilty, due to his writings on his blog in the post I referenced above, because he brings up quite a few things in that one blog entry, such as his only 'outlet' is flirting with girls on Facebook and when he was a prof at the U of Northridge (while married) and the way he describes the violence that appears to be so accepted in their household toward each other, it lends one to question his motives, but alas in that same post he said it was the outline for a book as well as comparing his thought process to that of a serial killer.

They are attention seeking and using their child as one big ticket, and all will come crashing down soon enough is my opinion.

"To refer to serving a sensible diet as starving someone is certainly pretty histrionic and quite in keeping with this father's general tone. Which feels pretty icky to me."

Exactly. The silver lining I get from following this case is that there's a lot of people out there who can see through the father's drama and pick up on how manipulative and self-centered he really is. Fortunately, there's some more concrete evidence about how unstable and dangerous he might be as a parent too, which is good because it's much more difficult to get people to understand the subtle self-aggrandizement he's working into his accounts of the situation.

He constantly makes it sound as though he has no other choice and has been forced to subject Jani to what are in fact highly unusual and heavy duty (even for adults) treatments for someone of that age for reasons not even all that well supported by most mainstream psychiatrists (although I gather that's changing for the worse in the near future).

Underlying all of his writing is the assumption that Jani has a brain disease and nothing else and that anyone who thinks otherwise is some "irrational" nutjob conspiracy theorist. Unlike his "fringe critics," he happens to believe in science and childhood schizophrenia is of course a well established brain disease.

By saying Jani's "not a brat" after all... "she's a schizophrenic," he further reveals how proud he is to have successfully labeled her defect and how tragically heroic he is in accepting the burden of his sick daughter. He talks about all the horrible things he went through because of her, but, you know, you shouldn't worry about him-- Jani's the victim of this "illness" and you should focus on her (which leads all his supporters to do just the opposite). And he apparently censors his blog comments, encouraging his sycophants and silencing his critics, only letting the occasional inflammatory comment stand to let everyone else know of his struggle.

It's disturbing so many others just buy right into his writing style as though he really were this humble martyr forced to beat her in an impotent rage as hard as he could and to put her on high dose combinations of antipsychotics which left her with blood in her urine, among other problems. His whole style is to mock criticize himself, bemoaning how he could have done more compared to the intentionally humble seeming description of his intentionally extraordinary sounding hard work and devotion to saving Jani from her "disease."

The worst case scenario is that Jani isn't even all that psychologically "ill" and this guy is just using her to satisfy his martyr fix. I believe there've been documented cases of parents making their kids appear ill or outright poisoning them for that very reason. I've read parent mental illness blogs before and the big difference between them and this one is they all seem like they're doing everything they can to keep their kids out of the psychiatric system while he seems like he's doing everything he can to keep Jani there (and this isn't to say that anyone who believes in the benefits of psychiatric medicine or hospitalization is suspect; what I'm saying is most parents want to see their kids get well and stay well and I'm not getting that vibe from Jani's dad-- for what it's worth, the vast majority of parents with blogs I've read about their children in the psychiatric system aside from this guy's have seemed very compassionate and genuine to me).

totally agreed, Bryan, and what bothers me the most is that he has this huge platform for mental illness with his blog... and whether he knows it or not, he is pushing the medical model, hook, line and sinker. Let's all "medicate" our kids to the gils! It will SAVE them. Any other ways of looking at Schizophrenia is just "anti-psychiatry" at work. And - whether he knows it or not - he is linking mental illness with violence. His blog contains either references or full on posts about Mark David Chapman (Lennon assasin) the VA Tech Shooter, and others.

Even his trivia is wrong (Clozaril was not off-patent in the 70s, Clozaril was approved in 1990. Tegretol is not spelled "Tegratol") Maybe it's a nitpicky issue, but there's something wrong when you're an ENGLISH TEACHER and you can't spell your daughter's medication correctly.

Big Pharma should start sponsoring him - they couldn't have paid for a better friend.

Sick as it is, the Schofields' have a new exploitative website: http://www.janisjourney.org

The old blog has been taken down but the author of the copy on this one is pretty bad too though it's not expressly said that it's Michael writing it, still here's a bit. The Michealish sounding author writing about access to education:

"f a child was paralyzed, you wouldn't hold him to the same standard as a child who has full use of limbs, so why do we hold mentally ill children to the same standard as functional kids?"

Duh Michael, first of all a child with paralysis is entitled to the same education as a child without paralysis. Furthermore, the very idea that a child labeled mentally ill is the opposite of a functional child is horrifying and incorrect. Sure there's the drugged into an unable to function human, adult or child, and the functional human....

They've had that site up and running for a while now, and at the bottom of his new blog he appears to have "media" contacts...(agents working for him)as well as a Twitter account just in time for the Oprah show fall out...either to take the personal blog receiving much criticism down, or to promote the new 'save us and Jani' theme with that big pay pal button. They are using her photo on Twitter, if anyone is concerned with privacy they sure are not.

Bryan & anon, you have hit the nail on the head regarding Michael. He is exploiting Jani, the public for their money and sympathy and everyone else around him. He is a criminal and seriously dangerous. If you think the money you are donating to Jani is going for her well being, think again. The money is being deposited directly into Michael and Susan Schofield's pockets. Neither one of them work for a living. They collect unemployment and live off your donations. Plus, what their parents send them every month. Don't feel too sorry for these folks. They have a rackett going here. The ones' to feel sorry for are the kids. The innocent children that these two mentally ill people brought into the world. I just have to ask, why aren't these parents in prison for extortion? And especially Michael for child abuse, sexual abuse, physical and mental abuse?
Also, I read that he started a fire and burnt down a school in Minnesota. Why is this guy getting away with arson?

I need to stop reading his blog. OMG now he tells a story of a poor psychotic man on an airplane who gets brutally beaten and ultimately dies for threatening behavior.

His conclusion? "So don't tell me psychosis can't kill you."

Um, no, actually, he was killed by the violence of other people, so-called sane and rational people.

I kind of believe her (Jani)
They right away label her because she sees things that others don't. The thing is, don't we all? Just because she sees them more and they affect her more doesn't change anything to me.
I see things too, they tell me things. My friend has the same problem. We aren't labeled as having schizophrenia.
So maybe we are the ones that need help. Maybe we should try to see them, instead of trying to change her.
I really want to meet her. Maybe she could help me see them...

I tend to believe I'm quite intuitive, and as I watched this story on Oprah yesterday, a nagging feeling of "something isn't quite right" crept over me as the hour progressed. As I took to the internet to learn more, I fear that my intuitions were indeed correct after reading the rambling blogs of her father. I do not believe that Jani is mentally ill or has schizophrenia. Her father is mentally ill. This needs to be investigated by CPS and this child needs to be rehabilitated before it's too late.

Well, Michael Schofield got his book deal with Waxman Literary Agency, telling his tales about his daughter Jani, and her diagnosis of schizophrenia. What ever happened to Jani's HIPAA rights? Her rights of privacy? As a child, doesn't she have more rights of privacy and protection? So, speculation is that he should be collecting $150,000 to $200,000 for this book deal. It seems as though Michael and Susan Schofield's plan to make it in "Hollywood" is paying off for them by exploiting their daughter. What lovely parents.

The child's story will soon air on 20/20 television program.

The father has complained on his *new* blog that he has to defend her "violence", via video for the program and he claims to not have the "proof".

http://www.janisjourney.org/ click on 'blogs and podcasts', "Michael's new blog".

Oprah, 20/20 and the LA Times among others would never know this child existed if the family did not contact these people. Read the father's original blog and just see his arrogance unfold.

Pat, I knew it! I knew the moment I read his blog that he was looking for a book deal. What a pathetic excuse for a parent. What a drama queen.

This "book" deal shouldn't come as any surprise; it has been these parents intent from the start to personally capitalize upon an abused child's suffering.

They have opportunistically tapped into the modern day psychiatrist market place, and are marketing this child without any limits of conscience; just like AZ markets "Seroquel".

Social constructs like honest truth, ethical behavior, moral responsibility, and basic concepts of humanity are the lost throughout this process; replaced with the narcissistic not so golden rules of notoriety and greed.

Anyone really looking, saw this coming a long time ago.

Think the notorious "Balloon Boy" parents multiplied a thousand times over as jumping off point.

The psychiatrists who treat her should be ashamed of participating in her exploitation.

Susan & Mike,
Wanted to write you for a while. My daughter is 12 now. She was diagnosed with Bi-polar with aditory voices,ADHD,fetal alchol syndrom,conduct disorder. She was diagnosed at the age of four. We adopted her when she was 3 and her sister was 5.We went through a lot of the samed things. It almost tore our family apart. We ended up putting her in residental placement. It was like having my heart pulled out.We had a great team working with us. She has made great strides from where she came from. She still has along way to go. I believe they have been able to help her more than we ever could. I have done so much research. I would love to share it with you.