S6, AFTERSHOW: The Girl Who Melted w/ Dr. Kirk Honda

WEBVTT

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Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality. Listener discretion is advised. Just got

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off a call with doctor Kirk Conda
of the Psychology and Seattle podcast, So

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excited to share it with you guys. Who was an absolutely intriguing talk and

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a personal delight of mind to be
able to talk with him, because I

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started, you know, listening to
doctor Kirk Conda a few years back when

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he was and he might still do
this breakdowns of ninety day Fiance and those

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type of reality shows and kind of
analyzing the motives behind people on the show,

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and I just found it fascinating.
I think he has a very sharp

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mind. And as you guys know, I know a lot about true crime.

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I know how to tell true crime
stories, or at least I think

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I do decently. But I'm not
a psychologist. I remind you guys a

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lot. I'm not a psychologist.
I'm not a lawyer. So I have

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to bring these people in to help
help us better understand these cases, or

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I try to. Here's the episode. Please go check out his show.

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It's called Psychology in Seattle. Listen
to it on YouTube, or you can

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subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
any platform a podcast is on. Thank

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you for being with us, doctor
Kirk Conda. And should I call you

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Kirk or doctor Honda, whatever you
want to I'm open to anything. I

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don't usually notice what people call me, honestly. Okay, cool, all

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right, thanks for being with us, doctor Honda. He's the host of

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a phenomenal podcast called Psychology in Seattle. He is a doctorate in psychology,

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a masters in Marriage and Family therapy, and has been working in psychotherapy since

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nineteen ninety six and a professor since
nineteen ninety eight. His podcast covers serious

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discussions of depression, anxiety all the
way to lighthearted stuff such as analyzing reality

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shows and even YouTube apologies. Go
check him out on YouTube and all podcast

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platforms. Just search Psychology in Seattle. Thank you so much for being here

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with us. How's your day going
good? It's sunny here in Seattle,

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which isn't usually the case, as
everyone understands, so I'm in a good

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mood. All right. Well,
thank you for joining us. And could

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you just tell us a little bit
about why you started a psychology podcast.

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Yeah, so it was two thousand
and seven, two thousand and eight,

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and I was listening to a lot
of podcasts myself, and at the time

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it was the initial foray into podcasting
by some people. There were very few

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podcasts, but of the podcasts that
were out there about science and psychology,

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I just loved them. I loved
the intimate nature. I loved the fact

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that they weren't tied to any major
corporation. They were long form, they

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were conversational, the you know,
the person who was doing the podcast could

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kind of do whatever they wanted to. They just follow their own nose in

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terms of what they wanted to create
and how they wanted to impart information,

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and so I was just obsessed with
it. I loved it. And then

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I thought maybe I could start a
podcast. And I thought, well,

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even if I'm the worst podcast around
in the English speaking world, there's only

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three other psychology podcasts, so even
I found the worst, I would be

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the fourth best in the world.
And have been loving it ever since.

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Now, in the past few years, I've become a full time podcaster or

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YouTuber, no longer teaching full time
or practicing full time a very small practice,

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very small practice these days, and
also I teach at the university in

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a limited fashion. Awesome, had
you heard of this case? The Lacy

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Fletcher case before. No, so
let me just run down the basic facts

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of the case and then kind of
get your take. I mean, the

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biggest mystery for me, we'll get
to in the end, is the psychological

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motivation behind what happened the cases from
Slaughter, Louisiana, small town a thousand

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people, about thirty minutes north of
Baton Rouge. This fan of three,

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the mother Sheila Fletcher, calls the
police one night at two thirty in the

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morning, says that her daughter is
not breathing and she needs police to come.

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Medical to come. They try to
ask her questions, she just says,

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it's a long story. They show
up and kind of the way this

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case has been covered in the news
is the girl who melted and this well,

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she wasn't a girl anymore. She
was thirty six years old and her

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parents had basically kept her on this
couch in their living room and she just

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disintegrated into the couch over a period
of five to ten years. I mean,

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a couple working theories. One of
the theories I have is that they

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said that she started refusing, didn't
want to leave the house, and then

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she just wanted to sit on the
couch all day. The dad said he

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brought a toilet into the living room
because she didn't want to go to the

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toilet, but she got to a
point where she didn't want it. This

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is according to the parents, so
we don't know how true this is.

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They claimed she didn't want to even
get up to use the toilet, so

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she started defecating in the couch or
on a towel and they would clean it

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up, and maybe they kind of
like the shame and guilt maybe started having

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them resent her, so maybe they
accelerated the abuse. How does that land

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with you or what's your take on
everything? Yeah, I was thinking someone

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something in a similar van. Of
course, we can't know. The range

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of possibilities are broad. It could
literally be the initial knee jerk interpretation I

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think most people would have, which
is that the parents were abusive and horrific,

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sadistic, psychopathic, They didn't care
about their daughter. They left her

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that they forced her to be there, or they beat her into submission if

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she ever stood up, or they
might have literally even chained her to the

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couch and she was just left there
to rot. And they were horrible,

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horrible human beings. So that's still
possible, we can't know. Or on

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the other side of the spectrum,
you have the individual, the individual that

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died that she was the main factor
that contributed to this situation. You're presenting

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something I think sort of in the
middle, which I would be prone to

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pursue as an hypothesis if I were
involved, which is that you could imagine

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And if you've ever had a kid
with autism, or you've been around kids

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with moderate to severe autism, it
can be challenging as a parent. There's

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a lot of issues that if you
don't know, if you haven't seen it,

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you don't work with these folks,
you might think, well, it's

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an autism, just like you're a
little quirky, and yeah, that's why

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we call it a spectrum just or
but you know, with moderate to severe

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autism, it can be extremely difficult
to handle. I mean I used to

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work with occasionally in my early career
with people with autism, and there was

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an individual. He was a teenager
and he didn't talk really at all.

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Every once in a while he would
use a couple of words. So it's

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really hard to just imagine how you
have a kid, a fifteen year old

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and you're trying to get his needs
met. He's trying to community, you're

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trying to get his needs met,
and you basically have to take guesses as

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to what's going on. He would
get violent with me at times if I

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didn't do what he wanted me to
do. I was just a worker,

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and he clocked me just full on
in the face, blindsided me. And

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it didn't I didn't. I wasn't
permanently injured or anything. It was just

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it was very shocking to me because
I didn't I didn't even know he was

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upset, you know. And so
I don't want to paint people with autism

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is violent, because of course that
is not a scientific association. But the

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point is is that it's very hard. It can there's a lot of challenges.

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So you could imagine that you have
a family, as you said,

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that are ashamed and they don't have
a connection. The thing that would have

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solved this is if there was a
robust support system around this family, if

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there was a system in place,
or the family, uh, you know,

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availed themselves of the system. Because
it could be either it could be

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either there was a system available and
the parents just didn't involve themselves, or

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the support in that area was so
poor that they might have even asked for

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help and no one showed up,
which happens all the time. The funding

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for these programs is varied and always
underfunding. There's a there's not there's there's

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not enough tax dollars being allocated to
this sort of thing, and there are

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people who just drift into the background
like this, less severe cases than this,

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but today, currently in the United
States, the most richest economy country

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that's ever existed, there are people
who aren't you know, their households,

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who are suffering and situations like this, and they're asking desperately for someone to

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come help them, and there's just
no one available. So it's a tragedy.

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It's it's a it's an anti disability
issue, it's an anti autism issue,

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it's anti reality issue, it's an
anti tax program issue. So you

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know, that's my position on that. It's an obvious one once you understand

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it. But so it's possible that
for whatever reason, they didn't have that

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connection. Maybe if we knew more, the parents were given plenty of opportunity

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to avail themselves. Maybe they were
justly trying. Either way, you the

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kid starts having troubles in school.
We don't really know the details. That's

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a little odd to me that you
would start homeschooling a kid at fifteen,

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because usually as if the kids already
in school, then things must be going

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at least well enough. But let
me jump in because there's a detail I

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forgot, which is the school she
was going to was a private Christian school

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and for whatever reason, it ended
at ninth grade, and so she would

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have had to enroll in a new
program. And that's when the parents decide.

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I mean, it's still here's points
still stands, but it wasn't.

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It wasn't like she was about to
go into the next grade. Yeah,

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that that does add a detail there, because that would be difficult for any

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parent in a situation. It's like, well, how do we find a

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school that will accommodate? How do
we find a school that she'll go to?

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What would be another possibility that you
know, she might they might have

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tried to set her up. And
you know, I don't want to make

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it seem like the parents are these
wonderful people. We don't know that guy,

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Like I said, they could just
they could be awful in a variety

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of different ways to different degrees.
But it's possible that there was some kind

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of barrier there and then they're like, well, I guess we'll ad school

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again. I'm just telling a story
that is possible amongst us. They the

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kid starts to have issues, she
might have started to develop some sort of

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other mental illness, you know,
seemingly maybe anxiety about Some people can develop

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OCD or compulsions around that could lead
them to wanting to sit in a one

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in one place the fact that she
because people don't. The thing is is,

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regardless of autism, no one wants
to sit in a pool of their

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own crap and urine. No one
wants to do that. It's not something

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that people like. So when I
hear that, I hear either they were

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being abused and forced to be that
way, or there was some mental issue

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that was a greater consequence then taking
care of herself in that way. Right,

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So if it wasn't abuse, which
we can't know, then it could

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have been some sort of compulsion around. You know, I haven't seen this

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specific obsession, but I could imagine
happening where someone is literally literally like if

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I get up from this couch,
I will die, or the germs are

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going to get me or I mean, it could have even been some form

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of psychosis. And the issue again
with autism, with some people, they

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could be suffering from something like this
because they can be you know, they

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can't coexist within the same person,
and it might be really hard to communicate

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with them. You might not know
why they're not getting up from the couch,

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and they don't have the ability or
their trust or the safety to be

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able to tell you why, what
what's happening for them. And then there's

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no there's no recourse and the parents
maybe there's some frustration there, maybe there's

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some abuse there, I don't know. And then like cooking a you know,

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raising the temperature on a frog in
a in a you know, pool

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a pot of water, which is
a myth by the way, frogs do

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jump out eventually, but the family
just we see the end literally twenty years

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later, how bad it got.
But you can imagine, day by day

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by day, these little changes,
you know, you can imagine the first

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time that again I'm just telling a
story, someone knows, but the first

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time that there's defication on the couch
that the parents are like, oh no,

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no, you know, you can't
do that. And so they're trying

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to deal with it. Maybe they
have some success for a couple of years,

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but over time it's it just starts
to get You get more and more

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used to it, and then they're
just like, look, you're a grown

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woman. Now you're twenty two,
and you're still doing this. This is

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on you. And then maybe they
try that, you know, for a

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while of just like, well,
we gotta maybe if she lives in her

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own crowd, so'll eventually clean it
up. And then you just get used

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to you know, fast forward,
and then you get what you get.

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But like I said, if the
parents had just had someone, even just

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if it was one social worker come
to the house once a month, I'm

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guessing that this whole thing would have
been solved because there are ways of helping

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people with autism along these lines.
It's it's not it's not hard. When

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you have specialists and experts in this
area, they know exactly how to proceed.

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You know, there can be bumps
in the road, but you work

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with the individual, you work with
the family. You show up and you

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talk to him, it's like,
hey, how's it going, And maybe

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you play a game the first couple
of sessions, and then over the time

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goes on that they start to like
you and you start asking questions of just

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like, so, what's going on
with the couch here? You like,

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you know, and you know,
you just slowly maybe over a few years,

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maybe there's some medication involved, maybe
there's some other kind of treatment involved,

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or who knows, but there's nothing. I find it highly unlikely that

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this individual either chose to live this
life like I want to sit on this

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couch and have this situation. I
also find it highly unlikely the parents set

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out to do this, you know
what I mean. But as you said,

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medical neglect, and it's here just
hearing the details, it's pretty likely

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that even given the story that I
told you, that criminal medical neglect is

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allegation, because even with everything I
just said, like, you know,

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it's challenging Dadada at some point,
you know, you live in modern America.

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There are hotlines, there's the Internet, there are services, even if

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it requires you to maybe get a
little upset and say, hey, you

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know, someone needs to help me
with it, like they should have done

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something at some point, Like it
doesn't take a genius to understand like this

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is an untenable situation and a danger
to this to this individual and we you

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know, I don't know about the
state therein, but in my state,

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there are laws against caretakers of dependent
adults. Even though they're adults. You

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can be charged with neglect or abuse
just on the basis of not tending to

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their medical needs because you know they're
dependent on you. So it doesn't agate

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their responsibility or their crime, but
it might not fit the stereotypical story of

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parents who were statistically changing someone to
a couch. And yeah, that's what

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I My kind of instinct was as
I looked into it more and more,

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was it didn't seem like your classic
case of that or even hoarding disorder.

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I've seen a lot of really grotesque
neglect cases with people who were hoarding.

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But this house supposedly was lean.
And the other thing that didn't fit was

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it wasn't it didn't seem like a
child who was a total disappointment and was

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like locked in the basement because she
was just in the living room, like

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it seemed like they would have secluded
her more where they wouldn't have to see

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her every day. Locked in syndrome
is a rumor that I heard repeated on

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a couple of news sites. And
I looked into that and I found that

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the coroner said it definitely wasn't locked
in syndrome. He didn't put that in

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the report, and he doesn't even
know what locked in syndrome is. It's

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not a medical term. That kind
of well, yeah, I mean,

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well, I think what people are
referring to is when people have within normal

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limits mental capacity but they can't communicate. They are perhaps paralyzed, they've had

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a stroke and the injury is to
such a degree that there's there's no ability

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to communicate, or you know,
they're famous cases where the only way they

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can communicate is to blink their eyes, so they learn how to use Morris

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code or something. And if you
didn't know better, you might think that

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the person is in a compromise vegetative
state. Their mental capacity isn't there at

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all, because they're not responsive.
You are screaming in their face and they

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just don't blink and eye. Really, so, I think that's what they're

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referring to, and there's no reason
to believe that that was the case.

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It's a pretty rare situation. And
I mean, was there any indication of

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that from the parents. I mean
that that's the problem as you were indicating

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earlier, is the only account we
have is from the parents. There's no

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side individual that put eyes on this
kid for twenty years, so you have

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to just hear their story. And
I said that she was not in that

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state. But they also claimed that
she was of sound mind to make her

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own decisions, and that's the reason
that they ended up not getting her help.

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They called a doctor once about five
years before she died, and the

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doctor said, yeah, you need
to probably take her in. Its probably

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when it was starting to get pretty
bad. And this is again just a

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guess by on my half. They
said they asked her, she said she

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didn't want to go. They said, okay, you can make your own

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decisions. You're an adult. And
then they said they decided not to.

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Yeah, but it's strange she hadn't
seen a doctor even for a basic checkup

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in nineteen years, which I mean, it's just kind of strange that she

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wouldn't go for a physical or dental
or anything. Well, again, more

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evidence that there was something going on
with her mental illness wise completely separate from

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autism, that was resulting in her
not wanting to leave the house and also

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not wanting to leave the copchule hard
to know. It is a tick in

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there. If they could corroborate that
call to the doctor, if there's records

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of that, then there is one
record of one call. Yeah, so

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that is helpful to them. But
again, any rational parent of a special

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needs kids would know that you've got
to do so much more. You can't

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just wipe your hands. And while
I asked them, you know, and

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they said they refused, So moving
on now, could they have possibly tried

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to call other services and they just
ran into dead ends? I mean I

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could see that happening. It doesn't
Again, I don't think any rational parent

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would act this way. You know, at least once a week they would

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throw their hands up and be like, we have to do with the something.

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I mean, you know they would
I don't know, just start pickting

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outside of the capital to be like, we have a kid at home and

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we need you know, parents,
most parents, even they're not so great

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parents, would have done something like
adequory. What do you think it was?

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Do you think they had a serious
mental illness? So I don't know,

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it could be could be could be
um like what would that even?

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Or maybe there's no reason to believe
that's pretty rare um. They could have

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been raised in a very neglectful way
themselves. They could have odd belief systems,

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um conspiratorial, I mean, who
knows, um. But that wouldn't

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be mice. That wouldn't be my
initial hypothesis. My initial hypothesis would be

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that, uh well, my initial
hypothesis with the parents would be that they

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were raised in a way that taught
them important lessons to them that when you

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run into it was like this,
you give up or you just put it

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on the kid and say, well, it's your life. So you made

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your bed, you're gonna live in
it. Like I'm guessing both parents got

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a hefty amount of pathological If you
made your bed, you have to lie

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in it. Nothing mental illness wise, because there's really yeah, I mean

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you could have some sort of social
anxiety or some sort of personality disorder for

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sure, But nothing jumps out at
me as an obvious candidate. It makes

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sense. Well, we will find
out. The trial is June nineteenth,

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twenty three. They're charge with second
degree murder in Louisiana. Yeah, I

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want to respect your time and if
you had any closing thoughts, and I'll

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mention your podcasts again psychology in Seattle
pest you for anything interesting. Second,

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yeah, I given the details that
you've told, I could see that the

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second degree murder charges sticking because,
like I said, every day they had

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an opportunity to try something else and
they didn't. They just they you know,

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we could have sympathy for the position. It's not like they woke up

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in the morning and said, we're
going to kill our child. But there

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were millions of opportunities for them to
wake up one day and say like,

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okay, we've got to call someone
like we got to do. Because if

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they would have called the right person, you could almost claim the physician might

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be partially to blame too, because
they didn't follow up. They didn't connect

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them with another service like well,
if they refuse, here's a number you

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should call or something like that,
or do a follow up like did you

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because they should have known. They
probably a heard that. I'm guessing that

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the parents told the physician. I
don't know that the kid, the adult

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kid at that point hadn't left the
couch for fifteen years. I'm guessing that

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there was some sort of presentation of
information. I don't know. Yeah,

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yeah, I could see the second
degree murder charging sticking. And I would

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say that given the details that I've
heard as a citizen, I think they

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deserve to be prosecuted and sentenced on
that because, like I said, like

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just even as a human being,
you know, it sucks. That's the

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other thing, a part it like
aside from that which I hold. But

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there are so many parents right now
with special needs kids who may or may

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not even be young adults at this
point, and it's so hard even with

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services. And then the fact that
you live in a community that doesn't have

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access to service or you don't know
how to access those services or when you

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it's a very it's just a very
very very difficult situation for these families,

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and they feel ashamed, and you
know, you walk out the door,

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you go on the internet and everyone's
talking about autism like it's this special,

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quirky thing and it's not a big
deal. And or they're talking about autism

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like it's the precursor to murder like
in Sandy Hook. You just or autism

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is caused by diet or vaccines.
You know, there's so much nonsense pseudo

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science out there, and you know, might diet play a role in one

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symptom. Sure, but anyway,
and then yeah, there's just so much

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suffering going on because as a society
and as a government, we completely ignore

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these people. And so you just
have to figure if we were better as

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a system, this probably wouldn't have
happened. Oh, can I ask you

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just one more quick question? Sure? Um, just to follow up on

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that line of thinking. This was
what I was trying to think of earlier.

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If a community was underfunded, such
as we had in this case where

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we think we did, what would
happen if a if a child was unable

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to care for themselves in such an
extreme capacity and the parents did call,

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would that child go to some kind
of special needs home or if there was

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no funding or what would happen?
Well, special needs homes are very expensive

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and if the parents can't pay for
it, which the parents in the United

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States wouldn't be able to afford these
things because you know, you're talking five

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hundred a thousand dollars a day kind
of thing. Actually, um, I

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mean maybe not that much, but
a definite state run hospital that they would,

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but that that requires tax dollars to
be allocated to such and you know,

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there's a lot of anti government anti
taxes in our country. That basically

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negates these things from being an option
for people. So there are facilities waiting

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for that funding, but the ones
that do exist, there's such a limited

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set of beds that the state has
to gate keep who gets into those beds,

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and it's only the most severe Like
if you had a if those parents

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had died, for example, prior
to this death of the child, and

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the authorities showed up, you know
that she would have gone into one of

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those facilities. She would have gone
somewhere. You know that the government does

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dump her on the side. I
mean sometimes they honestly, they do just

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dump them on the side of the
street. But but if there are parents,

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generally speaking, the government will well, we'll say, well but you

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have a you know, you know, because the parents would be petition and

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the government would say, but you
have the capacity to take care of this

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kid, let's throw some more services
at you. But you know, you're

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not as hard up of a case
as other I mean, you can even

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have violence. You can even have
a kid who's being violent, threatening to

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the parents, and there's still not
enough beds or funding. So yeah,

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well, thank you so much for
joining us. I really appreciate your insights

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00:29:27.720 --> 00:29:33.680
and everybody please go check out Psychology
and Seattle. Just search for it in

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00:29:33.720 --> 00:29:40.519
your podcast app or on YouTube.
Phenomenal podcast, and again thank you for

357
00:29:40.640 --> 00:29:45.160
joining us. Thanks I'll check out
your podcast. I like true crime and

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it sounds like you cover some interesting
cases