Due to traumatic episodes that occurred in our childhood, we are prone to carry marks for the rest of our lives. That’s the case of Beth Thomas, the six-year-old girl who wanted to murder her parents and shocked the world with her documentary about her life, entitled The Wrath of an Angel.
Beth was adopted in 1984 with her younger brother Jonathan by Christian couple Tim and Nancy Thomas, who dreamed of having children. However, the children came from an abusive and dysfunctional home. When she was just one year old, Beth was orphaned by her mother and left in the care of her biological father.
During her early childhood, she suffered sexual and psychological abuse, and was even raped by her father. After the crime was discovered, the man lost custody of the children, who were sent to social assistance and then chosen by another family.
Signs of psychopathy
The new parents were always considerate and affectionate with the siblings, and soon they began to notice a behavior, to say the least, strange in Beth. The girl was extremely violent and refused any show of affection.
As the years passed, the child’s attitudes reached more worrying levels. Several times, Beth tried to suffocate her brother using a pillow. She had also stabbed her pet dog, killed countless baby birds, cut off a classmate’s head using a piece of glass, masturbated, ingratiated herself sexually to her grandfather, and declared her desire to coldly kill her parents.
In 1989, the frightened couple took Beth to a psychiatric facility. The girl underwent several tests until the diagnosis was confirmed: she suffered from Reactive Attachment Disorder, a syndrome that prevents the individual from creating affective bonds with the people around her. Extensive therapy was started to try to reverse or even alleviate the child’s psychological condition.
During treatment, Beth was hospitalized and it was discovered that she was planning her parents’ deaths and even hoarding kitchen knives to carry out the task. The Doctor. Ken Magid, who handled the case, testified that the girl understood the consequences of her actions and showed no guilt or remorse.
The cure
After decades of intense attachment therapy, Beth Thomas began to show improvement. Today she works as a nurse, helping children who have gone through the same situation as her. And she still travels the world giving lectures on her history.
Although it seems like a happy ending, the cure does not seem possible to some experts, who believe that Beth only learned to pretend and repress her psychopathic instincts.
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