The Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine

Author:Adrian Raine [Raine, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-307-90778-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

8.

THE BIOSOCIAL JIGSAW PUZZLE

Putting the Pieces Together

Henry Lee Lucas never really had a chance in life. Right from the beginning he was damaged goods. His father, an alcoholic hobo named Anderson Lucas, who lost both of his legs after falling off a freight train, whiled away his time drinking, selling pencils, and making illegal liquor. Henry himself became addicted to alcohol by the tender age of ten. Drunk most hours of the day, Anderson had no time for Henry—or anyone else, for that matter.

Henry’s mother, Viola, was an even worse parent. An alcoholic as well as a prostitute, she gave birth to Henry when she was forty, after she had already abandoned four children to foster homes. Henry; his elder brother, Andrew; his parents; and Viola’s pimp all shared the same bedroom in a dirt-floor, ramshackle cabin near Blacksburg, Virginia, without electricity or plumbing. From the time he was a small boy, Henry had to watch his mother having sex with her clients.

Chronically malnourished, Henry was forced to scavenge for food in garbage bins to stay alive. His mother would cook only for her pimp, and the children ate their scavenged food off the floor, as Viola wouldn’t wash plates. His first hot meal as a child was when he started attending school and a teacher took pity on him. That same teacher also gave him his first pair of shoes.

His mother psychologically and physically abused him. Once, when he was seven years old, he was too slow to fetch wood for the stove, so his mother hit him hard on the head with a wooden board. Such was the level of neglect that he lay where he had fallen for three full days in a semiconscious state, totally ignored by the rest of his family. Ironically, it was Bernie the pimp who eventually thought something was seriously wrong and took Henry to the hospital, telling doctors he had fallen off a ladder.1

This was likely only a fraction of the physical abuse and head trauma Henry endured. For the rest of his life he experienced blackouts, spells of dizziness, and at times felt he was floating on air. Neurological examinations and brain scans later in life revealed evidence of extensive brain pathology, very likely a result of the early maternal abuse and deprivation he had suffered.2

Henry was also subjected to sustained psychological cruelty by his mother. When he was seven she pointed out a stranger to him in town, telling him, “He’s your natural pa,” a fact later confirmed by Anderson, Henry’s supposed father.3 To have such a basic fact of life shattered like that would pull the psychological rug out from under most children’s feet, and not surprisingly Henry was devastated and in tears when hearing this news. His sister documents that his mother dressed him as a girl from the time he was a toddler up to his first day at school. His teacher, horrified by his treatment, cut his hair and got him a pair of trousers to wear.

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