- Oct 17, 2011
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Roman Lopez was 11 when he went missing. His years of torment were concealed by home schooling.
(gift article, but reading it may not be an enjoyable gift.)The police were searching, too, and now they had returned to the place where Roman had gone missing earlier that day: his family’s rented home in Placerville, Calif. Roman’s stepmother, Lindsay Piper, hesitated when officers showed up at her door the night of Jan. 11, 2020, asking to comb the house again. But she had told them that Roman liked to hide in odd places — even the clothes dryer — and agreed to let them in.
Brock Garvin, Roman’s 15-year-old stepbrother, was sitting in the dimly lit basement when police came downstairs shortly after 10:30 p.m. He ignored them, he said later, watching “Supernatural” on television as three officers began inspecting the black-and-yellow Home Depot storage bins stacked along the back wall.
Brock had no idea what had happened to Roman. But he did know something the police did not: Much of what his mother had said to them that day was a lie.
Home education was an easy way to avoid the scrutiny of such people [mandatory reporters in schools]. That was the case for Piper, whose children were learning less from her about math and history than they were about violence, cruelty and neglect.
Almost nothing resembling education took place, her sons said. But there was a shared project in which she diligently led her children: the torture of their stepbrother, Roman.
Little research exists on the links between home schooling and child abuse. The few studies conducted in recent years have not shown that home-schooled children are at significantly greater risk of mistreatment than those who attend public, private or charter schools.
But the research also suggests that when abuse does occur in home-school families, it can escalate into especially severe forms — and that some parents exploit lax home education laws to avoid contact with social service agencies.
But home-school parents, arguing that serious episodes of abuse are rare, have fiercely resisted [efforts at oversight]. And nowhere have their efforts been more successful than in the state where Roman and his siblings spent most of their lives: Michigan.
Michigan is one of 11 states in which parents are not even required to tell anyone they are home schooling, let alone demonstrate they are teaching their children anything.
The family had moved to California from Michigan just a few months [before the police search]
Then the lid on one last bin snapped open, and the officers’ laughter stopped.
Even in his benumbed state Brock felt something strange pass through the room, as if the air pressure had suddenly dropped. It was quiet for a moment, then the police began pulling on latex gloves.
Lindsay pleaded no contest to a charge of second-degree murder last year and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. [Her husband and biological father of Roman] Jordan pleaded guilty in October to the same charge and is awaiting sentencing. He is already serving a 15-year sentence after pleading guilty to a federal charge of sexually exploiting a child.
