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A.J.'s Story - Newspaper Articles

The following links take you to various articles in AJ's story as it appeared in the South Florida media.

PLEASE DO NOT COPY THE INFORMATION ON THIS SITE BEFORE ASKING.

Thank you!

In Loving Memory Of Andrew James "A.J." Schwarz April 24,1983 - May 2,1993 "Beautiful Child who has found love from the angels...RIP..."
This page contains articles from the Palm Beach Post and The Sun-Sentinel from the year 1994.

If you are interested in reading the FULL DETAILS of this case aside from what is posted here, please purchase "No One Can Hurt Him Anymore" by Carol J.Rothgeb and Scott H. Cupp. Mr. Cupp thinks it's the book that nobody will read...please show your support and show him that you care about AJ, too by ordering his book by clicking on the cover image below.

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AJ Forced to Eat A Roach, Girl Says (8/25/94)
Tale of AJ's Life a Short, Grim Tragedy (8/26/94)
Schwarz Neighbors Tell More Stories of Abuse: Young AJ Cursed at, Humiliated, They Testify at Trial (8/26/94)
'She Shook Him Like A Rag Doll' (8/26/94)
AJ's Stepmother Deserves to Know Isolation of a Raft (8/26/94)
Trial Focuses On Abuse: AJ's Neighbors Recount Assaults (8/27/94)
Neighbors: AJ Humiliated in Last Months (8/27/94)
HRS Staffers Found AJ to be 'OK': Youth's Case Worker, Counselor Take Witness Stand in Child Abuse Case (8/30/94)
Boy's IQ Drop Blamed on Insults (8/30/94)
AJ 'Learned He Was Garbage' Psychologist Testifies (8/30/94)

A.J. FORCED TO EAT A ROACH, GIRL SAYS
The Palm Beach Post
August 25, 1994
VAL ELLICOTT

Jurors got their first chilling glimpse of Andrew Schwarz's ``life inside the asylum'' Wednesday as an 11-year-old girl detailed a few of the diverse humiliations his stepmother is accused of inflicting on him.
In one particularly degrading scene, Jessica Schwarz forced her stepson, called ``A.J.'' by most who knew him, to eat a cockroach, Teresa Walton testified.
``He was chewing and there was another half in his hand he hadn't eaten,'' Teresa, who lived near the Schwarz home, told prosecutor Joseph Marx.
``What was he doing?'' Marx asked.
``Crying,'' Teresa answered.
Another time, she said, Schwarz forced her stepson to write, ``I should never have been born'' on pieces of paper that she hung in his room.
Schwarz, 39, is charged with five counts of aggravated child abuse, a second-degree felony, and two counts of child abuse, a third-degree felony.
She is also charged with second-degree murder in A.J.'s death in May last year.
He was 10. That trial will be held later.
Schwarz's attorney, Rendell Brown, described his client as ``a mother of tough love and tender mercies . . . a disciplinarian,'' who was alone in recognizing that A.J.'s behavior problems were far more serious than state health officials disclosed to her when she and her husband, David ``Bear'' Schwarz, agreed to take custody of A.J. and his half-sister in 1990.
``She kept saying, `Look, this boy has a problem, let's get him some help,' '' Brown told jurors in opening statements.
School officials and others mislabeled Schwarz as abusive because they were turned off by her unrefined social skills and her brutal directness, Brown said.
``There are two things she loves dearly,'' he said of Schwarz, ``children and animals.''
Subsequent testimony, however, reinforced prosecutor Scott Cupp's portrayal of A.J.'s home life as ``an asylum'' and a source of unremitting suffering for the 10-year-old, described by his third-grade teacher as bright, unselfish and starved for affection.
The teacher, Mary Idrissi, recalled that Schwarz refused to allow A.J. to participate in field trips or class parties and belittled him in public and in notes to school.
When Schwarz refused to give her stepson money to buy Christmas gifts as part of the school's ``Holiday Shop'' in 1992, Idrissi gave him $2 to buy something for himself, she recalled.
``What he bought was all for me,'' she recalled, crying.

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TALE OF A.J.'S LIFE A SHORT, GRIM TRAGEDY
Sun-Sentinel
August 26, 1994
JOHN GROGAN Staff Columnist

The brief life of A.J. Schwarz was a Cinderella tale without the happy ending.
Like in the fairy tale, there was an Evil Stepmother, pampered stepsister and allegations of injustices that sicken the soul.
But in the real-life tale, unfolding in Palm Beach County Court this week, there was no Prince Charming to whisk the skinny, affection-starved boy off to a better life. There was only a 10-year-old's lifeless body floating in the backyard swimming pool.
In Courtroom 445 on Thursday, witness after witness described an Evil Stepmother, Jessica Schwarz, who makes the fairy-tale original seem mild. Cinderella, after all, was never forced to eat a cockroach or sleep in urine-soaked sheets.
A.J. slept beside the kitty litter box in a bare utility room off the garage as his stepsister enjoyed a well-appointed bedroom with a waterbed, toys and porcelain dolls. While she played, he toiled at endless chores, almost continually grounded by his stepmother.
It seemed that A.J. was always sweeping or mopping or cutting the grass with a pair of scissors.
Words over the fence
James Ebenhack, a county firefighter who lived next door, told the jury he was in his back yard one day when he heard the Evil Stepmother scream at A.J.: "You're a worthless piece of s---;I hate your f---ing guts."
Another time, he saw A.J. with two blackened eyes.
Another neighbor testified that A.J. came to her home wearing a T-shirt on which were written the words: "I am nothing but a worthless piece of s---, don't talk to me."She gave him a shirt to wear over it.
Yet another found him squatting along a neighborhood street in the working-class development west of Lantana, again with blackened eyes, when he should have been in school. "At that point, he looked crazy," said the neighbor, a 19-year-old woman. "He looked like he'd lost it."
A 12-year-old boy who lived across the street and considered A.J. a friend said he watched one day as A.J. was forced by the Evil Stepmother to run naked down the street as his classmates were arriving home from school. "He had his hands in front of his privates," the boy said.
A 15-year-old girl who was friends with A.J.'s stepsister said that one day, she came in the house to see him sitting at the kitchen table with his mouth taped shut. "He just looked embarrassed and sad," she told the jury.
`She would get screaming'
Another neighbor whom the Schwarzes hired to spray their home for fleas said the abuse was continual. "She would get screaming to the point that frankly you couldn't understand what she was saying."
And so went the day in court, a child's final, horrific months of life reduced to monotone recollections oddly at home in the sterile, well-lit courtroom.
The accused, an overweight bulldog of a woman with a low-rent radiance, sat emotionless all day, occasionally jotting notes on a pad.
Her lawyer appeared to grasp at any small acknowledgment that his client was something more than a beast. Repeatedly, he tried to get witnesses to admit that the utility room where A.J. slept and at least once was forced to eat dinner off the floor wasn't all that bleak, that it had curtains on the window and a rug on the cement floor. A cheery little dungeon.
If A.J. had a fairy godmother, it was the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. He died, bruised and alone, waiting for the rescue that never came.
The Evil Stepmother, one witness testified, made A.J. write over and over the sentence, "I should have never been born."
Given A.J. Schwarz's brief, pitiful life - a life with no hope for anything better than the relief of premature death - perhaps on this point the woman he called Mom was right.

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SCHWARZ NEIGHBORS TELL MORE STORIES OF ABUSE
YOUNG A.J. CURSED AT, HUMILIATED, THEY TESTIFY AT TRIAL
Sun-Sentinel
August 26, 1994
MIKE FOLKS
Staff Writer

Peering around a witness box microphone, a 12-year-old boy told a jury on Thursday how he watched his friend, Andrew "A.J."Schwarz, run nude through his neighborhood as A.J.'s stepmother watched.
"I seen A.J. running down the street naked," Troy Falk, a blond-haired, blue-eyed seventh-grader, calmly testified.
"He was like, kind of jogging like, kind of looking behind him," Troy said. "He was covering his privates."
Troy was asked by a prosecutor to show the jury how A.J. covered himself as he ran.
In a "mean voice," Jessica Schwarz, 39, ordered A.J. back into the house after he had reached the end of the block, Troy said.
Troy was one of eight neighbors called on Thursday by prosecutors to bolster their case that Schwarz was a monstrous stepmother who tortured A.J.
In May 1993, A.J., 10, was found drowned in the family's above-ground pool of their Lantana-area home. His nude body had more than two dozen cuts, bruises and scrapes when discovered by his father, David Schwarz.
Jessica Schwarz is charged with second-degree murder in A.J.'s death, but will be tried on that charge later.
In stark contrast to the horrific, heart-wrenching testimony heard on Wednesday about how Schwarz had forced A.J. to eat a cockroach and how the only money he had to buy Christmas presents was the $2 his third-grade teacher had given him, Thursday's testimony was calm, almost matter-of-fact.
Among those neighbors testifying on Thursday was Troy's mother, Ida Falk, 39. She calmly recounted seeing A.J. constantly doing chores around the yard. One time, he wore masking tape over his mouth.
Although Ida Falk said she knew A.J. was being abused, she reluctantly conceded she failed to report Jessica Schwarz to the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.
"She was always yelling and screaming," Falk said of Schwarz. "I was a afraid what she might do to us if we tried to do anything."
Neighbor Catherine Turner, who sometimes baby-sat for the Schwarzes, told the jury of A.J.'s stark bedroom, furnished only with a bed, a bookcase and a few toys. His sisters' rooms differed significantly. "The girls had a better bed, more toys," she said.
Turner also said Schwarz told her how she punished A.J. in a manner similar to the incident that Troy said he had witnessed.
"[A.J.) had exposed himself at school and he had to learn his lesson, so she made him walk around [inside) the house with no clothes on," Turner said.
Beth Walton, 39, a nurse who lives near the Schwarzes, told the jury how she was disturbed by a T-shirt that A.J.'s stepmother forced him to wear while Walton cared for him one day.
"[A.J.) showed up in my house with a T-shirt that said, `I'm nothing but a worthless piece of s---. Don't talk to me,'" Walton said.
Walton telephoned Schwarz, telling her she had to a go to a weight loss clinic and could not take A.J. out in public in the shirt. Schwarz insisted A.J. wear the shirt, and said he would be quizzed about it when he got home.
"I put a button-up shirt over the T-shirt," Walton testified. "I told A.J., `If Jessica asks if you wore the shirt, tell her yes.'"
Walton also recalled when Palm Beach County sheriff's deputies had gone to the Schwarzes' home to find out why A.J. was not in school. Schwarz ran to Walton's home to confront A.J., who was visiting there.
"She grabbed Andrew," Walton testified. "She shook him like a rag doll all over my kitchen."
Schwarz then told A.J. that the only reason he was being kept at home was because he had doctor appointments. "`You better say that is the reason,'" Walton said, quoting A.J.'s stepmother.
Walton said A.J. was also kept out of school for punishment. Once, he forgot to clean the cat litter box before going to class.
"Jessica went and took him out of school. She was going to keep him out the rest of the week, and he was going to do chores," Walton recalled.
Walton's daughter, Elissa Diener, 19, testified she once saw A.J., with two black eyes, squatting on the corner at the end of her street. He had his school bookbag and was apparently skipping school. "He looked crazy to me. He looked out of it," she said.
James Ebenhack, a Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue employee, said he lived next door to the Schwarzes. He, too, saw A.J. with two black eyes.
Ebenhack also said he often heard Schwarz belittle A.J. in a loud voice he could hear from his back yard. "She had called him a useless piece of s---, and said she hated his f-----guts," he told the jury.
The trial continues today and is expected to last through next week.

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`SHE SHOOK HIM LIKE A RAG DOLL'
The Palm Beach Post
August 26, 1994
VAL ELLICOTT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The steady regimen of abuse and humiliation Andrew Schwarz reportedly endured in his stepmother's home left him looking ``crazy'' to a neighbor who recalled Thursday seeing the boy, both eyes blackened, sitting on a curb staring blankly into space.
Diener said her disturbing glimpse of Andrew, known as A.J., occurred ``after months of stories'' about Jessica Schwarz's vicious treatment of her stepson.
She and other witnesses added to the list of mental and physical abuses that prosecutors Scott Cupp and Joseph Marx say defined A.J.'s home life. They rejected defense attorney Rendell Brown's suggestions that A.J. had serious behavior problems.
Schwarz, 39, is charged with five counts of aggravated child abuse and two counts of child abuse. She faces a trial, not yet scheduled, for second-degree murder in the death of her stepson, 10, whose bruised body was found in his family's backyard pool in Lake Worth in May, 1993.
Beth Walton, Diener's mother, recalled Schwarz erupting in rage after sheriff's deputies visited to ask why A.J. had missed school.
``She grabbed him and shook him,'' Walton said. ``She was kind of in a frenzy. His head was whacking back and forth. She shook him like a rag doll all over my kitchen.''
Another neighbor, Gail Ragatz, recalled that Schwarz once told A.J., ``If you're going to act like an animal, you're going to eat like an animal,'' and forced him to eat on the floor by the cat's litter box.
``The boy had done nothing,'' Ragatz said.
Walton recalled only one instance in which Schwarz said something kind about A.J. ``She said she thought maybe she could love him, she wasn't really sure.''

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A.J.'S STEPMOTHER DESERVES TO KNOW ISOLATION OF A RAFT
Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
August 26, 1994
FRANK CERABINO

I found a use for one of those empty rafts.
The one I saw Wednesday afternoon would work just fine.
It was washed up on the sands of Palm Beach, nothing much more than an inner tube with a wooden frame around it. A strange visitor from the land of the have-nots, brought to the land of the haves, courtesy of time and tide.
The Cuban refugees who tried to cross the Florida Straits on this raft never made it. If they were
lucky, the Coast Guard picked them up and returned them to the island they were fleeing.
If they were unlucky, they were swallowed by the sea.
The raft drifted on, unconnected between worlds, until it beached itself in front of a walled estate in Palm Beach named ``Sans Souci.''
Without care.
Which made me think of A.J. Schwarz.
It's the other story of rejection in the news this week.
Like the Cuban refugees, the 10-year-old Lake Worth boy faced his own world of lost connections. And like many of the refugees, he didn't make it out alive.
A.J.'s body was found last year floating in his backyard pool, a battered, bruised boy whose crime seemed to be that he was unwanted by his stepmother.

IS THIS REALLY `TOUGH LOVE'?

The details have been coming out this week in sickening regularity during the child abuse trial of Jessica Schwarz.
How she found horrible ways to punish her stepson and how A.J. just suffered in silence.
``He was a nice little boy,'' neighbor Ida Falk testified.
Which made it even harder to stomach hearing what witnesses said he had to endure:
How his stepmother made him eat from a plate on the floor next to the cat litter. Or wear a T-shirt that told others not to talk to him, because he was a worthless piece of excrement.
How she made him walk to school, while her other children got rides. And how she made him write on paper, ``I should have never been born'' and then hung it in his bedroom.
``Most of the time when I was baby-sitting, he had to stay in his room,'' testified neighbor Catherine Turner. ``She just said that he was a bad boy and had to stay in his room.''
Her lawyer, Rendell Brown, has tried to characterize Jessica Schwarz's actions as a form of ``tough love,'' as if this is the way a loving person nurtures a child.
``She's not a huggy-kissy person, is she?'' he kept asking witnesses Thursday.
It was one question no one had to hesitate answering.
And if you've followed the news stories about A.J. and the Cuban refugees this week, you can't help wondering how people can be so cruel.
How can Fidel Castro, the father of his nation, turn his back on so many of his children? And how could Jessica Schwarz turn her back on a child that, according to his teacher, was simply starved for affection?
Castro called his people los gusanos - the worms. Jessica called A.J. ``little dumbo.''
Without care.
It was after I got a sickening dose of the Schwarz trial that I started thinking about her and that raft together.
She's the person who needs that raft.
If justice worked on a more equitable basis, Jessica Schwarz wouldn't be incarcerated, she'd be set free. Set free on that makeshift raft toward a blank ocean horizon. Alone. Unconnected. Unwanted.
Isolated in the ruthless way she isolated A.J.
Perhaps wearing a T-shirt saying, ``Don't pick me up. I'm a worthless piece of motherhood.''
We could call it a sentence of ``tough love.''

CUBAN MOTHER TESTIMONY TO `TOUGH LOVE'

Although, that might cheapen the real stories of tough love, the ones being played out on rafts like that every day. Stories that have nothing to do with torturing children with bizarre forms of punishment.
Stories such as the one told by Daniel Bussott-Prieto, an 8-year-old boy, who is alive today because of his mother.
As the family crossed the Florida Straits this month, their vessel hit rough seas. Daniel's mother put the only life vest they had on her son just before the vessel capsized.
She, her husband and three other people drowned. Daniel was the only survivor, saved by the vest his mother handed him.
That's tough love. When you love someone enough to die for them.
It's too bad that Daniel's mother is no longer in this world. And too bad that people such as Jessica Schwarz aren't the ones heading out to sea on the next raft.

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TRIAL FOCUSES ON ABUSE
A.J.'S NEIGHBORS RECOUNT ASSAULTS
Sun-Sentinel
August 27, 1994
MIKE FOLKS Staff Writer

Horrific tales from prosecution witnesses in the child abuse trial of Jessica Schwarz continued on Friday.
Witnesses took the stand, describing the psychological and physical abuse they saw Andrew "A.J."Schwarz's stepmother commit against the 10-year-old boy.
Jurors heard testimony from A.J.'s court-appointed guardian, who in a 1992 report described the boy as "close to a nervous breakdown."
But prosecutors hammered home the testimony of neighbors, who described Schwarz as a monstrous stepmother who put A.J. through hell before his short life ended. Brittany Aheran, 11, held up her right fist, showing jurors the weapon Schwarz used to strike A.J in the face and head. "It happened a lot of times," she said.
Brittany also recounted how she was in Schwarz's Lantana-area home when A.J. walked in late from school one day.
"She yelled at him and made him take off his clothes and run down the street naked," Brittany said. "She told him that was his punishment. ... She told me, `Now, don't go telling your mother about this.'"
A.J.'s body, bearing more than 24 cuts, bruises and scrapes, was discovered on May 2, 1993, by his father, David Schwarz, in the family's above-ground pool. An autopsy concluded that the boy drowned.
Jessica Schwarz, on trial on seven counts of child abuse, is also charged with second-degree murder in A.J.'s death. That trial will be held at a later date.
Brittany's mother, Candace Ahern, at first didn't notice anything wrong in the Schwarz home, she said. After school, her daughter would stay with the Schwarz family until she got home from work.
Ahern first saw signs of abuse when she picked up her daughter one evening.
"A.J. was outside. I noticed that his eyes were blackened and his nose was swollen. His nose almost didn't look like a nose. It was disfigured, like," she said.
When Ahern asked A.J. how he had been injured, she was shocked at what Jessica Schwarz did, she told the jury.
"She laughed at him, hysterically laughed at his face, and told him he had `s--for brains.'"
Later, A.J. told her he had run into something in his garage.
Tales of physical abuse also dominated the testimony of Anne Steinhauer, who called state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services officials after seeing A.J. abused by his stepmother as he cleaned the garage.
"She picked him up by the neck, his feet were like six inches off the ground," Steinhauer said.
Schwarz then carried A.J. by the neck around the garage, showing him areas he hadn't cleaned, before throwing him down, Steinhauer said.
To show A.J.'s state of mind, prosecutors presented testimony from Richard Zimmern, the boy's court-appointed guardian from July 1992 until his death in May 1993.
Two months before A.J.'s death, Zimmern said he had a chilling conversation with Schwarz, who told him, "[A.J.'s) eyes are dead. He has no soul."
Reading aloud from a September 1992 report he filed, Zimmern described A.J. as "suicidal, withdrawn and unable to assess reality."
Six months earlier, A.J. had been placed in a Vero Beach psychiatric hospital for six weeks. His father and stepmother visited him twice, Zimmern said.
The guardian said he learned a lot about Jessica Schwarz after taking A.J.'s case.
Schwarz described A.J. as a "bad boy with a grin on his face" who needed "tough love" and "firm rules and prompt punishment."
Zimmern said he was baffled that A.J.'s teachers said the boy was well behaved, while Schwarz said he was a problem.
Although Zimmern said he suspected abuse, after once seeing A.J. with two black eyes, he had no proof.
"A.J. never told me [his stepmother) was abusing him," Zimmern said, noting A.J. said his eyes were blackened in the garage accident.
"I was never able to penetrate Andrew's reserve. He would talk to me about many things, but never anything about Jessica," Zimmern told the jury.
The trial continues Monday and is expected to last through the week.

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NEIGHBORS: A.J. HUMILIATED IN LAST MONTHS
The Palm Beach Post
August 27, 1994
CHRISTINE STAPLETON
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

In the months before his death, neighbors saw 10-year-old A.J. Schwarz slowly edging the family's lawn with scissors, sadly chanting: ``My name is A.J. I lie on people to get them in trouble. I will never do it again.''
Meanwhile, a woman who neighbors believe was Jessica Schwarz, the boy's stepmother, hollered from the house: ``Louder!''
``He was down on his knees,'' neighbor Margaret Pincus said Friday in circuit court. ``He was out there . . . it seemed like all day.''
Another neighbor said she saw the boy trimming the grass with scissors in the rain, saying: ``I say bad things. I do bad things all day long. I get people in trouble.''
Jessica Schwarz, 39, is charged with five counts of aggravated child abuse and two counts of child abuse. She faces a trial, not yet scheduled, for second-degree murder for the death of A.J., whose bruised body was found in the family's pool in Lake Worth in 1993.
Eight witnesses, including two of the boy's playmates, offered more testimony Friday about the months before the boy's death.
Schwarz showed no emotion as witnesses described her as a rude, violent mother who casually belittled A.J. in front of others. Assistant State Attorney Joseph Marx dramatically capped off his direct examination of each witness by walking over to Schwarz, pointing to her and asking: ``Did you ever see Jessica Schwarz hug A.J.?''
``Did you ever see Jessica Schwarz kiss A.J.?''
``Did you ever hear Jessica Schwarz say any kind words to the boy?''
Each said ``no'' to each question.
Schwarz scribbled notes and occasionally shook her head as she listened to the litany of alleged abuse and neglect:
When neighbor Candace Ahern asked the boy how he got two black eyes and a puffy nose, Schwarz laughed ``hysterically . . . and told him he has (excrement) for brains.''
On a rainy morning, Ahern said she asked A.J. if he would like a ride to school. ``He said he couldn't go to school because he had to collect cans for his mom.''
Dr. Richard Zimmern, a retired pediatrician who regularly visited the boy as part of court proceedings, said he became alarmed when Schwarz said: ``His eyes are dead. He has no soul.''
The trial continues Monday.

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HRS STAFFERS FOUND A.J. TO BE `OK'
YOUTH'S CASE WORKER, COUNSELOR TAKE WITNESS STAND IN CHILD ABUSE CASE
Sun-Sentinel
August 30, 1994
MIKE FOLKS Staff Writer

Although more than 18 neighbors have testified they witnessed Jessica Schwarz continually abuse her 10-year-old stepson, two Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services workers said on Monday they never suspected the boy was in danger.
Jannie Southerland, an HRS caseworker, and Joan Wyllner, an HRS child protection team counselor, testified they handled Andrew "A.J."Schwarz's case between November 1991 and January 1993 and never saw signs of abuse.
Last week, however, neighbors testified they saw Schwarz physically and emotionally abuse her stepson. The abuse ranged from forcing the boy to eat a cockroach and edging the lawn with scissors, to forcing him to run naked through the neighborhood and eat from a plate on the floor next to a cat litter box, they said.
Schwarz, on trial for seven counts of child abuse, is also charged with second-degree murder in A.J.'s May 1993 drowning death. That trial will be held at a later date.
Southerland and Wyllner were the first witnesses called by the defense.
The HRS workers on Monday were questioned on the case reports they kept, which chronicled announced and unannounced visits to the Schwarz home west of Lantana, at the HRS office and at A.J.'s school.
Southerland said she began handling A.J.'s case when he and his half-sister were removed from their biological mother's Fort Lauderdale home after their stepfather was accused of sexually assaulting the half-sister.
After A.J. was placed in the Schwarz home in November 1990, his grades improved and he seemed well cared for.
Southerland said only once did she notice A.J. exhibiting odd behavior. "He seemed a little hyper. Other than that, everything seemed OK," Southerland said. She told the jury she usually visited with A.J. or his family once or twice a month.
Wyllner also testified she never saw any problems when she visited A.J. "He said he wanted to stay with his father," she said. She visited with A.J. about once a month from September to December 1992.
Wyllner said she told HRS child protective investigator Barbara Black that an abuse report listing A.J. as having two black eyes and a possible broken nose was probably false. The report had been filed by A.J.'s biological mother.
Black has been indicted on a charge of extortion by threat for threatening to remove children from the home of a neighbor who had reported suspected abuse against A.J. She has yet to go trial.
Before the prosecution rested its case on Monday, George Rahaim, an HRS Child Protection Team psychiatrist, outlined how the litany of abuse affected A.J.
Rahaim said records from A.J.'s six-week stay in a Vero Beach psychiatric hospital revealed he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia and bed-wetting, all signs of abuse.
Other records showed that his normal I.Q. rating of 101 had dropped to a below-average rating of 86 in 15 months as a result of the abuse, Rahaim said.
The abuse resulted in A.J. developing a "ground-down spirit," Rahaim said. "He was so constantly degraded. He learned that he was garbage."
Also on Monday, A.J.'s half-sister testified almost in monosyllables from the judge's chambers via closed-circuit television, simply answering "yes" or "no" to most questions. She told the jury she saw her stepmother rub A.J.'s face in bedsheets he had soiled.

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LOCAL
The Palm Beach Post
August 30, 1994

BOY'S IQ DROP BLAMED ON INSULTS
WEST PALM BEACH - Psychologist George Rahim Jr. testifies that Andrew `A.J.' Schwarz `learned that he was garbage' from his stepmother, Jessica Schwarz. Rahim said the youth's IQ dropped 15 points during the first two years he lived with Schwarz, accused of child abuse.

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A.J. `LEARNED HE WAS GARBAGE,' PSYCHOLOGIST TESTIFIES
The Palm Beach Post
August 30, 1994
Author: VAL ELLICOTT
Estimated printed pages: 2

Jessica Schwarz's practice of lashing her stepson with stinging profanities and other verbal abuse so damaged his mind that his IQ dropped 15 points during the first two years he stayed with her, a psychologist testified Monday.
``That's a serious drop in intellectual ability,'' George Rahim Jr. told jurors hearing the child abuse case against Schwarz.
Rahim included the IQ decline - from 101 in March 1990 to 86 in February 1992 - among a long list of symptoms he said Andrew ``A.J.'' Schwarz displayed as a result of his stepmother's belittling attacks.
``It ground down his spirit,'' Rahim said. ``He was so frequently and consistently degraded that he knew it was true. He learned that he was garbage. That's overwhelmingly destructive.''
Rahim's testimony ended the state's case against Schwarz, who is accused of five counts of aggravated child abuse and two counts of child abuse. She also is accused of second-degree murder in A.J.'s death in May, 1993, shortly after the boy turned 10, but that charge will be tried separately.
Circuit Judge Walter Colbath told jurors at the onset of the trial that A.J. is dead but said the circumstances of his death are unrelated to the child abuse case before them. Jurors have not been told that Schwarz is charged in A.J.'s death.
Schwarz, 39, is expected to take the stand today or Wednesday.
Her attorney, Rendell Brown, opened the defense case Monday with testimony from state health department workers who recalled that A.J. was occasionally ``very hyper'' when the staffers visited him at home in Lake Worth but volunteered no complaints about his stepmother's treatment of him.
``He said he was doing good,'' Jannie Sutherland, who handled A.J.'s case as a staffer with the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, recalled of a visit in April 1992. ``He said his behavior and grades were good and had improved tremendously.''
Sutherland and Joan Wyllner said they saw no signs of the physical abuse Schwarz allegedly inflicted on her stepson.
A.J.'s half-sister - the two share the same mother, Ilene Schwarz, but have different fathers - testified Monday by closed-circuit television because she reportedly dreads being in the same room with Jessica Schwarz.
The 14-year-old girl recalled that Schwarz rubbed A.J.'s face in his own urine-stained sheets as punishment for wetting the bed, a problem she said he developed only after they both began living with Schwarz and her second husband, David ``Bear'' Schwarz. He is A.J.'s natural father and is on the defense witness list but has not been attending the trial.
Rahim, who never talked to A.J. but has studied the extensive files on his case, said such sadistic treatment made A.J. ``zombie-like'' and filled him with ``a deep, overwhelming learned humiliation.''

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