you may have had your fill yesterday...but this has to be noted

DA: Mom kept cancer medication from 8-year-old son
By Julie Manganis
Staff writer

SALEM — A mother has been charged with failing to give her 8-year-old son his cancer medication, a decision prosecutors say caused the boy's cancer to return in an untreatable form.

Because of Kristen Anne LaBrie's failure to medicate her child, "in all likelihood, Jeremy Fraser will not see his ninth birthday," prosecutor Kate MacDougall said during LaBrie's arraignment yesterday in Salem District Court.

LaBrie, 36, who moved recently from Salem to Beverly, pleaded not guilty to reckless child endangerment. She refused comment as she left court with her lawyer.

The boy's father, Eric Fraser, who now has full custody of his son, said he is outraged not only about what happened to his son, but that LaBrie was able to walk out of court yesterday without posting any bail.

"I'm pretty disgusted about the whole justice (system) and DSS," Fraser said. "Now my son's going to die."

Jeremy, 8, who is also autistic, had been in remission from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but in March the Department of Social Services was contacted by the child's oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Alison Friedmann filed a report of suspected neglect with the state after discovering that the child's cancer had returned, something that should not have happened had the child been given his medications.

"It's back and in a far more deadly form," MacDougall told Judge Michael Uhlarik. "He is not expected to survive."

Jeremy's ninth birthday is Aug. 2.

When first diagnosed, Jeremy had a good prognosis, according to a police report, with his chances of recovery put at 85 to 90 percent. But after being deprived of medications, his chances dropped to 10 percent.

"This child was in remission," MacDougall said. "His prognosis was good. This child came out of remission."

But the prosecutor said LaBrie did not fill at least half of the prescriptions her son was given — something the doctor and investigators checked by examining pharmacy and insurance records. She also canceled a number of her son's medical appointments, MacDougall said.

Canceled appointments

According to the police report by Salem detectives Peter Baglioni and Lt. Thomas Griffin, Jeremy was first diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2006. The child underwent a five-phase regimen of chemotherapy, including some drugs that were supposed to be given to him at home by his mother.

The detectives said LaBrie had canceled at least a dozen appointments for chemotherapy treatments and had failed to pick up the medications from a pharmacy.

"Due to Ms. LaBrie's failure to provide Jeremy with lifesaving cancer medication, his cancer has returned," the detectives wrote.

Fraser said his ex-wife picked up Jeremy's medication for about a month after he came home from the hospital. Then she just stopped.

Because of ongoing disputes with his ex-wife and her boyfriend, Fraser said, he cut off contact with her and with his son for some months. Then he got a call from LaBrie's sister, who told him Jeremy was back in the hospital and things didn't look good.

Fraser, a full-time UPS delivery driver, was on the road delivering packages a few weeks later when his son's doctor called.

"The doctor said, 'You need to pull over,'" Fraser said.

The doctors and a DSS worker "said Kristen basically stopped giving him his medicine," Fraser said. "She missed four IV chemo appointments and rescheduled 13 of them."

"It comes out to about a year that she didn't continue with the treatment," Fraser said. "They basically said if Jeremy got his at-home chemo he would not have relapsed. The doctor was very shocked that he was back in there so quickly."

Then the doctor told him they couldn't let Jeremy go home with LaBrie. "It's either you or foster care," Fraser recalled being told. The choice was clear.

'A peach' of a kid

Fraser and his son now live with Fraser's father in Saugus. Jeremy still spends part of his day in a special education program, and the rest of Fraser's family helps care for the boy while Fraser is at work.

"The kid's a peach," Fraser said. "He doesn't do one bad thing."

Hospice volunteers who came to the house recently called Jeremy "a saint," Fraser said. "He's so lovable. His belly laugh is contagious."

Prosecutors and police have not offered a motive in the case.

Police had attempted to interview LaBrie prior to charging her, but she declined requests to meet with detectives.

While caring for her son, she was living on Cleveland Road in Salem. Police also had an address for her on Claremont Road in Salem. But LaBrie moved and refused to tell police where, according to the detectives' report. Because they did not know her whereabouts, they sought and obtained an arrest warrant for LaBrie on Friday.

LaBrie turned herself in on the warrant yesterday morning at Salem District Court.

Her lawyer, Kevin James, argued that the charges stem from a "contentious divorce," an argument MacDougall immediately countered by pointing out it was a doctor who reported LaBrie.

James said his client had taken her son to more than 100 visits to Massachusetts General Hospital and "has been extensively involved in this child's care."

He said prosecutors will have a tough time proving the allegations.

"This is a very weak case," James said.

MacDougall asked the judge to set bail for LaBrie at $1,000, given a history of missing court in prior criminal cases. Uhlarik denied the request, releasing LaBrie on personal recognizance, with an order that she have no contact with her son.

"He (her former husband) doesn't let me see him anyway, so that's fine," an emotionless LaBrie said in court.

She is due back in court on Aug. 13.

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The bottom line for me is that this child's life would probably have been saved if Massachusetts had a shared parenting law.

Troubled parents are a fact of life. That's where shared parenting comes in. When parents are less than perfect — which is most of the time – shared parenting allows each parent to be the child's safeguard against failure by the other parent. By ordering sole custody to one parent in most cases, and giving the non-custodial parent only a few days per month with the child, the courts remove the child's best protection against failure of the custodial parent – the other parent.

Jeremy's plight is not at all unusual. The rates of child abuse and neglect are astronomical in single-parent households. The rates for single mothers, their boyfriends and their second husbands significantly exceed those of biological fathers. Many of these children would be protected if their biological dads were allowed more access to their children so they could monitor how their children were being treated.

The overall picture, based on the lengthy conversation with Fraser, is of the family court and the Department of Social Services (DSS — Massachusetts' child protective agency) ignoring mountains of evidence of an unstable mother.

This was so extreme that DSS and the courts switched custody of Karin LaBrie's older son to his father (not Fraser) in 2000. So her parenting limitations were well known by the time of her subsequent divorce from Fraser. Yet she was awarded sole custody of Jeremy, with subsequent tragic results.