caroline

At 1 year old Beth Thomas was being abused by her own father and left for days with almost nothing to eat. At 19 months she was adopted by a pastor and his wife, who were told she was a normal, healthy baby. By 6 she was smashing her little brother's head into a concrete floor and her parents were locking her bedroom door every night to keep him alive. Thirty years later she's a nurse who takes care of newborns. In 1990 she sat in front of a therapist's camera and talked about killing her family like it was a story about someone else. In the video below 6-year-old Beth swings her legs in a pink dress and answers every question in the same small, flat voice, while the therapist across from her tries very hard not to react. She says her brother is afraid of her. She says her parents lock her door at night so she won't hurt him. Asked if she would, she says yes, at night, because she doesn't like them seeing her do it, "but they can feel me do it." Asked what she'd use, she says a knife. Asked if she sticks pins in her brother, she says a lot, and that she's trying to kill him. Then he asks why, and for one second you hear the little girl underneath it all: "Cuz I was hurt so bad." She had squeezed baby birds to death and hidden knives from the kitchen. Doctors said her brain had learned before she could talk that nobody was safe, so she would hurt everyone first. It took years of intense therapy and a new adoptive mother. Beth grew up, earned a nursing degree and now spends her days keeping babies alive. Was Beth a born monster, or proof that a child can come back from almost anything if someone finally refuses to give up on her?