SPOKANE — When state officials ordered the caregivers of a 12-year-old autistic boy to dismantle a 6-by-5-foot cage where the child was sometimes kept, it created a nightmare for the family.
The Child Protective Services caseworker who found the cage in the basement of a local home last year called it "cruel and inhumane."
But the boy's adoptive parents, teacher and caregivers call the box a "safe room," not a cage, and insist it was humane.
Bud Hoisington — exposed to alcohol and crack before he was born — suffers severe autism, Tourette's syndrome, hyperactivity and a condition that causes him to eat nails and glass.
The safe room, say his caregivers, provided him with an indestructible place to vent, protecting his caregivers and himself. He'd thrash, kick, vomit, swear. When he was done, he'd return to being a calm, sweet kid, his parents said.
"To someone outside this world, a safe room like this may seem horrible," said Bud's adoptive father, Rick Hoisington. "But in this world, it's like a teddy bear to a child."
The box was constructed of steel tubing and mesh. A bucket served as a toilet. Bud spent some nights inside it.
And life at the Hoisingtons became chaotic when, under orders from CPS, it was shipped away as scrap metal last year.
Most seriously, Rhoda Hoisington tumbled down the stairs in November trying to control Bud. The accident left her with permanent brain and spinal cord damage. She speaks clumsily and risks paralysis without a neck brace.
"This couple should be canonized, but they instead have to endure this," said Ken Isserliss, the family's lawyer. "Truly no good deed goes unpunished."
Rhoda Hoisington, 51, has adopted five children through a state program for children with mental illness and fetal drug and alcohol exposure. She's also taken in 22 long-term foster children over the past 16 years.
She knew what she was getting into when she adopted 4-year-old Bud in 1992.
Born with cocaine in his blood, he was diagnosed as hyperactive, autistic and "extremely destructive" when he was a toddler, according to his adoption records. He went through five specialized foster homes before landing with her.
At age 4, he ripped apart a baseboard heater to suck on the wires. At 10, he tore apart a previous safe room. He lighted fires.
Marian Anderson-Skeen, a state-paid caregiver in the Hoisingtons' home for five years, watched the destruction increase as Bud grew to 145 pounds.
It was her idea to build the indestructible "safe room." She gave it to Rick and Rhoda as a wedding present in 1998.
Bud was locked in daily at first, sometimes overnight. He was frequently checked, and always went in willingly, said Rhoda Hoisington.
Sometimes it wasn't needed. Bud didn't use the cage for several months in late 1999, she said.
"It was kinda cool having it," Bud said in an interview earlier this month at the home. "If I got ticked off I could go in there."
His special education teacher, Carl Schubert, called the box "very beneficial to Bud's being able to control his behavior disorder." His school attendance jumped, and daily dosage of some drugs dropped in half.
To avoid a CPS complaint, the Hoisingtons showed the box to a parade of professionals.
But despite those efforts, CPS got a complaint in March 2000 about a boy in a "cage." The agency tagged the complaint as "founded" and the Hoisingtons as having committed "cruel or inhumane" acts.
"I've been doing this 27 years, and I've never heard of a child being locked in a cage," said Ken Kraft, the agency's regional administrator here.
Rhoda Hoisington hired Isserliss to challenge the agency. CPS changed its finding in the case to "inconclusive" last fall.
The Hoisingtons receive a $500 monthly stipend for Bud's care. Institutionalizing him would cost the state $385 a day.
A month after the box was dismantled, Anderson-Skeen's ribs were separated in a confrontation with Bud. A few months later, Bud broke the jaw of another caregiver.
Then came Rhoda's injury. Just before Thanksgiving, she clung to Bud as he tried to run into the street. The two fell down a flight of stairs, and Rhoda's head hit the wall, leaving a 2-inch gouge in a drywall corner.
She was soon slurring her R's and forgetting things. She began falling and hitting her head more frequently. She was diagnosed in February with frontal lobe brain damage and injury to her C3 through C7 vertebrae.
The couple are now negotiating with the state to build another, unlocked safe room.
The state Division of Developmental Disability is leery.
"It would have to be significantly different (from the previous one) for us to support something like that," said that agency's Spokane administrator, Karen Santschi.
Autistic individuals are profoundly introverted and estranged from reality, with hypertuned senses that cause them to become easily overwhelmed. The inability to gauge external, social consequences makes discipline ineffective. The cause is unknown.
Tourette's syndrome causes victims to emit involuntary purposeless movement, tics and sounds. The cause is unknown.