Disabled boy’s death makes no sense

The unnecessary death of Jason Rimer haunts me. I’ve tried to understand the parents who lost track of their son for 17 hours on a hot summer day in 2008, but I simply cannot.

I wonder how the disabled 4-year-old must have suffered, mentally and physically, during the 17 hours he was forgotten, unable to open the SUV’s door, trapped in the family vehicle while his parents and brothers were inside the home.

During the trial that ended Tuesday with the convictions of Stanley Rimer and his wife Colleen on manslaughter and child abuse and neglect charges, the father’s defense team tried to blame the mom. She was responsible, not him.

The jury didn’t buy it. Both Rimers were convicted of manslaughter.

Colleen also was convicted of three counts of child abuse and neglect, two involving Jason and one involving another mentally challenged son. She was not convicted of child abuse involving the three brothers who were not disabled.

Both Jason and his mother suffered from myotonic dystrophy, an inherited illness that affects body and mind.

Stanley Rimer was convicted of seven counts — manslaughter, two child abuse and neglect charges regarding Jason and four more counts of child abuse and neglect regarding four other brothers.

The only daughter among the eight children is Crystal Davis. Like her mother, before she left that horrible home in 2006 at age 16, she was expected to care for the males of the family. Her testimony, both before the jury and the grand jury, was more sympathetic to her mom than her dad.

She described the father beating the boys, the filth of the home, the lice, the feces, and Jason’s dirty diapers seldom changed by her mother and never by the father. Jason was given a bath once a week before going to church on Sunday, where his father was a Mormon Church leader.

She told of how there wasn’t always food for the younger boys, yet the parents stashed food upstairs for themselves in a refrigerator.

“If there was no bread downstairs or anything, they (the brothers) would have to go upstairs and ask for some bread, and sometimes my dad would say yes and sometimes he’d say no,” Crystal told grand jurors in 2008. “In 2004 I remember it being very dirty, filthy. We’d always have to get the carpets cleaned because there were animals in the house and they would soil the carpet. We also had my grandmother living with us and she would soil the carpets and her living there made it even worse because she has dementia and Alzheimer’s, and you know, she wouldn’t know what to do with things, she would move things from one place to another and make it more chaotic than it already was.”

Over 20 years, child protection authorities recorded 21 contacts with the Rimer family, including five after Jason was born. Only twice were neglect allegations substantiated and neither of those involved Jason.

Although the daughter testified calmly against her parents, when the verdict came down, her comments to Review-Journal reporter Francis McCabe were telling. “My mother didn’t deserve this. My mom is sick.”

About her father, who disavowed responsibility because he was sick that day: “My dad says he was sick and he didn’t know what was going on, and I believe him.”

Colleen Rimer seems to be a victim of her husband’s domineering ways and her own poor health while Stanley Rimer comes across as a misogynistic patriarch who believes his word is absolute and he can do no wrong.

Just guesswork, but on May 31, when they’re sentenced, she’ll get probation, he’ll get time, and their children will be haunted forever by Jason’s needless death and the realization normal families don’t live like this.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.