When Melissa Lemmon watched the
Amber Alert for Marcus Fiesel, it was as if she was looking at
the face of her own son at that age.
"He was a beautiful little
boy," she recalls. "He looked so much like Stefan when he was
3."
Like Stefan, now 13, Marcus had
autism. His foster mother, Liz Carroll, told authorities he had
wandered off in a public park.
Lemmon wanted to leave her
Washington Twp. home that very moment and join in the search for
the boy. She knew how difficult it would be for Marcus to
communicate. She could imagine his terror.
The truth turned out to be far
worse. Marcus' foster parents allegedly left him in their
Clermont County home for the weekend while they attended a
family reunion in Kentucky. According to prosecutors, Liz and
David Carroll left Marcus in a closet, bound in a blanket.
And when they came home to find
the boy dead, prosecutors said, David Carroll incinerated the
body. "Throwaway children," Lemmon says. "That is how a lot of
people look at autistic children."
She seethes with rage against
the alleged actions of the Carrolls, who used the very
psychology of the autistic child to torture and subdue Marcus.
"Wrapping these children in a blanket is a way that is often
used to calm them," she says.
But in her mind, the Carrolls
aren't the only people who failed Marcus. Lemmon blames Butler
County Children Services as well as Lifeway for Youth, the
private agency that placed Marcus with the Carrolls in May. Most
of all, she blames a foster care system that fails to provide
adequate screening or special training for foster parents taking
care of special-needs children.
How could Marcus have been left
with a couple with no outside income?
How could he have been placed
in a home without a thorough criminal background check? How
could both agencies have failed to make note of a third adult in
the household?
How could David Carroll's June
arrest on domestic violence charges fail to have been forwarded
to Butler County Children Services? The charges were pleaded
down, but there was plenty in the report to raise questions
about the couple's suitability as foster parents. There was a
paper trail on this family before Marcus was ever placed with
them. In court papers as recently as March — two months before
Marcus entered the home — Liz Carroll attempted to gain custody
of several of her husband's children by other mothers.
Noted Lemmon, "Nobody would
lease a Cadillac to that family. No one would give them a
million-dollar credit line. Yet they were given a life that
required a lot of care, a lot of extra responsibility."
Lemmon is looking for change,
not blame. She believes that foster parents for special-needs
children should be given extra scrutiny and special training.
Lemmon's son Stefan has
blossomed so much from the nonverbal boy he was. He's a
seventh-grader who works hard in school and loves to engage in
mock pirate battles with his mother.
"I know I am a better person
because of Stefan," Lemmon says, "and I know my life is a lot
more fun."
Marcus will never have the
opportunity to grow into that kind of boy, to make that kind of
difference in the lives of others.
That's not only a tragedy for
him. It's a tragedy for all of us who understand that every
child is a God-given gift, that no child is a "throwaway."
