Legal Question in Family Law in Texas
I would like to know which options a family has when dealing with an abusive, mentally ill teenager. The situation is as follows:
Male teenager (16) with two female siblings (12 & 19) living in the same home. The male teen has been diagnosed with a few mental illnesses such as borderline schizo, psychopathic tendencies, etc. His parents are both employed (44 & 50) and have a regular middle-class income.
Recently, for obvious reasons as the teenager now is tall and strong, the abuse has escalated from the teen terrorizing the entire family with emotional & verbal abuse, destruction of property, violent and graphic death threats to him now unprovoked physically attacking his father and literally beating him to the ground. His father recently was beaten pretty bad and left with bruises and a badly swollen "black eye". The teen shows Zero remorse and even threatens the entire family with more acts of violence.
The police has been called many times over the past four years but never helped much. It appears that there is not much anyone can do because of the age of the teen. And, according to some of the officers, unless he "seriously" hurts or kills someone, they can't lock him up. Once, another officer told the parents that they didn't have room in the local jails for kids like this one and he added: "Why should we be doing your job? This is your son....your problem".
It appears that now drugs are being consumed by the teen and possibly brought into the family home and maybe even sold to his schoolmates by him.
What can be done about this horribly dangerous situation? The girls and the parents deserve to receive some sort of protection before it really is too late...
The mother is terrified and also gets hit, pushed and threatened. The father is terribly embarrassed and has a hard time admitting that he is being abused by a "kid" and the two sisters have never felt safe in their home and have to lock themselves in a "safe" room when the teen boy goes on one of his rampages. Clearly this is a bad situation...please help with useful info :-(
1 Answer from Attorneys
Call CPS and see if they can help. You can also seek inpatient mental health care for him. That is, have him locked up in a psychiatric hospital until they can get him detoxed (if he's on drugs) and properly medicated to control his other issues.
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