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The Court of Appeals of Indiana has rejected a father’s parental privilege defense and affirmed the man’s conviction for felony battery of his autistic son.
Bradley Vernon Jr. and E.P. have two children with autism.
D.V., their son, is severely autistic and nonverbal and sometimes throws tantrums that involve screaming and hitting himself, according to court records. Sometimes after a tantrum, the son would have bruises on his forehead from smacking it.
The staff at his Applied Behavior Analysis therapy program school and his mom would restrain him during tantrums. He didn’t have any bruising from being restrained by staff or his mother.
In January 2020, Vernon picked D.V. up for an overnight visit and texted E.P. that he was having a meltdown.
Around 2 in the morning, Vernon texted E.P. again, saying he was mad and D.V. had another meltdown that resulted in a bruise on his cheek.
E.P. responded to the texts later that morning, questioning how their son got a bruise on his cheek. Vernon said that he didn’t know how their son got a bruise on his cheek and that he had to pin him down a couple of times, due to the son smacking himself.
Vernon dropped D.V. off at school in the morning, where a staff member noticed the severe bruising on D.V.’s face and Vernon acting nervous.
Vernon told them that D.V. woke up in the middle of the night wanting a toy he couldn’t have, so he hit himself with the toy.
D.V. had deep purple bruising on his entire left cheek and some of his right cheek.
The school staff took photos of D.V.’s face and sent it to the mother and the Indiana Department of Child Services.
The next day, the mother took D.V. to his pediatrician, who observed bruising and abrasions on the right side of the son’s neck and bruising on his right buttock and posterior right thigh.
His pediatrician had never seen self-harm injuries anywhere on D.V. except his forehead. The pediatrician had also never seen such injuries on D.V. before.
DCS referred D.V. to Ralph Hicks, a pediatrician with Indiana University Health. Hicks said the injuries were more consistent with an inflicted injury, given the pattern, nature and extent of bruising.
During opening statements with the Marion Superior Court, Vernon said he was just trying to parent, not be abusive.
The trial court found, with the evidence of the injuries, the state had disproved Vernon’s claim of parental privilege. It also found that Vernon’s actions were unreasonable and disproportionate, given the light of his evolving explanation and son’s injuries.
Vernon was convicted of Level 5 felony battery resulting in bodily injury to a person less than 14 years old.
On appeal, he argued that the state did not rebut his affirmative defense of parent privilege. Vernon didn’t disagree with the finding that he caused bodily injury, but disputed whether there was sufficient evidence to disprove his parental privilege defense.
The appellate court disagreed, finding it cannot overturn his conviction based on his defense of parental privilege.
“In light of all facts in this case, we conclude the State submitted ample evidence to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the force Vernon used against Son was unreasonable,” Judge Melissa May wrote for the court.
Judge Cale Bradford and Judge Paul Mathias concurred, but Mathias wrote a separate opinion to recognize the difficulty of parenting a child with severe autism.
“That said, for all the reasons explained by the majority on this record, Vernon’s response to Son’s outburst went well beyond the ‘reasonable force’ or ‘reasonable confinement’ ‘necessary for [the child’s] proper control,’” Mathias wrote.
The case is Bradley Vernon Jr v. State of Indiana, 22A-CR-2534.
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