News about the 6-year-old girl found chained to her bed in Norco has created a stir among many people within the past two weeks. And late last week, the child’s mother and grandfather — both in custody — gave their explanation for the trauma they have inflicted on the remainder of this young girl’s life.
Loren Bess, the girl’s maternal grandfather, told Riverside Press-Enterprise reporters the reasons for which he restrained his granddaughter, Betty Topper. As daytime caretaker for the child, Bess believed his granddaughter was autistic, and that he, therefore, did not know how to care for her properly.
“We were controlling her random wandering,” Bess said as one of his reasons for confining the girl to a bed. The 6-year-old “tore up everything,” including two cribs, a $1,000-plus brass bed, two radios and a lamp, he added.
But all children go through a phase in which they are notorious for destroying expensive objects, putting almost everything in their mouths and writing on walls with markers or crayons.
It is all part of the the learning-from-curiosity experience every child goes through in the developing stages of life.
Still, that leaves no reason for anyone to decide to discipline and keep control of a child by confining him or her to a restricted area like an animal.
Bess and the child’s mother, Cynthia Topper, believed that using a 2-foot-long harness and chain (which are specifically designed to restrain horses) in order to supervise the child was the best solution.
Topper also believed her daughter was completely healthy and happy under her care. They said the child often sat at the edge of her bed for hours, coloring and drawing in picture books.
Even the child’s grandfather claimed the 6-year-old was never in any harm: “She was as happy and healthy as I am,” he told reporters.
However, the grandfather had his own problems. Bess was reported to have been miserable since his wife’s death in 1993, the year in which officials believe the abuse against Betty began.
“My dad, when mom died of cancer, he wanted to stop the whole world. He wouldn’t throw anything out,” Topper said.
Whether or not the child was happy cannot be determined. It is believed that Betty never truly developed any speaking skills because she had been neglected for so long. Her only method of communicating with people is by grunting or growling as an animal would do.
In addition, the young girl is definitely not as healthy as her mother imagined.
Officials found her in a back room on Sept. 7, chained to a bedpost in an area filled with animal and human feces. Her mother said the feces was the result of her daughter’s failure to being toilet trained.
Betty was also emaciated and in diapers, and she weighed only 30 lbs.
Through it all, neither Bess nor his daughter can truly comprehend the idea that they may have committed any wrongdoing. They cannot even understand why they are in jail in the first place, much less fathom the fact that Betty lived a life far less than normal.
Both caretakers are being held at a detention center on charges of torture, child endangerment and false imprisonment.
There are claims that Betty’s mother suffers from mental disorders resulting from an ex-boyfriend’s abuse years ago.
But through every unjustifiable excuse Topper and Bess give, their story is more heartbreaking than it is appalling.
It goes beyond any issues of mental stability and proper parenting, skills Betty’s mother and grandfather lack.
The 6-year-old’s new ordeal deals with her well-being and future. The greater concern is whether or not Betty will still have the ability to lead a life more normal than that to which she has been accustomed.
For the time being, however, no one may know what lies ahead for Betty. It may take years for her to develop proper functioning and living skills, and even then, it may take longer for her to learn communication skills and tell the story of her trauma on her own.
Araceli Esparza, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at esparzaa@ulv.edu.
