A father's say on boy's life is undeserved.

Byline: Dianne Williamson

COLUMN: Dianne Williamson

Little Nathaniel Turner skirted death at just 9 months old, when a two-alarm fire swept through his family's Worcester apartment in 2002 and claimed the life of his 3-year-old brother.

He would not be so lucky this spring, when he was delivered to a different and far more deadly inferno, one characterized by repeated beatings at the hands of a father he barely knew.

The hell that became the life of 7-year-old Nathaniel Turner culminated, ironically enough, on Father's Day, hours before his dad brought him bruised and unconscious to the hospital. It would be the second and last time that the boy's father would take his son where no boy would ever want to go - first, from a loving home; next, to a premature deathbed.

Relatives of the boy with the large brown eyes and beaming smile said he was happy living with his maternal grandmother in a small town in Alabama and had only recently come to Worcester to spend the summer with his father, Leslie G. Schuler, who had developed an 11th-hour interest in establishing a relationship with his son. And, contrary to widely published reports, no judge ever ordered his grandmother to surrender Nathaniel to his father; rather, the family agreed to allow the boy to come to Worcester to bond with his dad.

"The family was kind of pleased that the father wanted to play a role in the child's life," Worcester Police Detective Capt. Edward J. McGinn Jr. said yesterday. "They were taking a crack at things."

They couldn't know it was a decision that will haunt them forever. Police now say that the boy was subjected to repeated beatings for weeks and was whipped with a belt, with the most severe beating occurring on Sunday, before his father finally sought medical attention for his son.

Even yesterday, though, as Nathaniel lay lifeless in the hospital, Mr. Schuler was loath to leave his child in peace. At a court hearing rendered gruesome by its clinical and matter-of-fact definitions of death, Mr. Schuler's lawyer objected to the removal of Nathaniel's ventilator and argued that "any and all medical treatment" be utilized.

That argument came despite the agreement of lawyers representing Nathaniel, his mother, and the state Department of Children and Families, along with testimony from Dr. Scot T. Bateman of UMass Memorial Medical Center, who testified in stark medical language that the boy was brain dead. With Nathaniel's mother and grandmother seated in the front row of the courtroom, Dr. Bateman described the boy's lack of brain stem function, his fixed pupils, the absence of blood flow to the head and other conditions he called "incompatible with life."

"There's no medical intervention that can allow this child to continue living?" asked Juvenile Court Judge Carol A. Erskine. "This child is dead?"

"Yes," Dr. Bateman replied. Judge Erskine then issued a ruling that allowed removal of the ventilator.

Before the hearing, Capt. McGinn described Nathaniel as a "handful" who may have had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

"The father quickly became overwhelmed," Capt. McGinn said. "He made comments that the child was disrespecting him and misbehaving. The guy was strict - he had standards he wanted the boy to go by. The child either wouldn't, or couldn't."

Mr. Schuler was present in the courthouse but opted not to enter the courtroom. That he was allowed a say about the boy's fate was obscene, for obvious reasons. It's also obvious why his lawyer objected to the removal of Nathaniel's ventilator - the assault and battery case becomes a murder investigation.

"His lawyer is representing him to the best of his ability," said Laurie Raphaelson, Nathaniel's guardian ad litem. "That doesn't mean I think it's OK. But lawyers don't get to have personal opinions."

Columnists do. And it's my opinion that there's something terribly wrong with a legal system that allows a man who fatally beat a child to prolong for even one minute a family's agony. That's the real disrespect - after making the boy's last weeks a living hell, Nathaniel's father tried to save his own skin by keeping his son's sad, tragic life in limbo. Contact Dianne Williamson via e-mail at [e-mail]