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Merrimack Valley

'The Miracle Baby' 12 years later

No longer a baby, but still very much a victim of shaken baby syndrome

Gretchen M. Putnam
gputnam@eagletribune.com
Published: June 14, 2009

HAVERHILL — Twelve years ago, Wayne S. Elliott III was 5 months old, a smiling, goofy little rascal who giggled when Mom played peek-a-boo with his shirt and loved to roam around their apartment in his walker.

But on this particular Friday, baby Wayne was crying. His mother, Carrie Bergeron, was at work, and he was left in the care of his father, from whom he gets his name.

The baby's wails got to be too much for Wayne S. Elliott Jr. He later told police, "All I did was shake him, because he wouldn't stop crying."

The shaking caused baby Wayne's brain to swell to the point that he ultimately became comatose. Doctors at Boston's Children's Hospital gave the 13-pound infant 24 to 36 hours to live, Carrie said.

But Wayne held on, leading doctors to dub him "the miracle baby." Two months after suffering a cruel fate at the hands of his father, baby Wayne did something his mother Carrie never thought she would see again. He smiled. A month later, he came home.

Approximately 1,300 children under the age of 2 fall victim to shaken baby syndrome each year — 20 percent of whom will die within the first few days. The violent shaking of a baby with its weak neck muscles and heavy head causes the brain to rattle inside the skull.

The majority who survive, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suffer handicaps ranging from learning disorders to "profound mental and developmental retardation, paralysis, blindness, inability to eat or exist in a permanent vegetative state."

Today, Wayne is going on 13, goes to school every day, and likes to fish. But his mom said he doesn't smile much, and when he does, it can be a sign of an oncoming seizure. He is legally blind, can't use the right side of his body, can't talk, and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. His brain is permanently damaged because of Elliott's decision to shake his son rather than comfort his infant's cries.

Elliott pleaded guilty in 1998, apologizing from the courtroom stand just feet from where then-18-month-old Wayne sat strapped in his stroller. He served seven years in prison for what he did to his son. Today, he is living out of state, is married and is the father of another baby. He could not be reached for comment.

Carrie and Wayne have grown a great deal since the incident. Carrie married Rob Bergeron and is now mom to Thomas, who is almost 2, and stepmother to Rob's two children, Ryan, 10, and Layla, 7.

Wayne now weighs in at about 90 pounds, and Carrie still carries him over her shoulder to the bathtub, to his wheelchair, and to his bed. She works three nights a week to help support her family.

Many of her family members and friends say Carrie does it all — how she is able to do it, they do not know. To them, Wayne is still the "miracle baby," but Carrie is truly the miracle mom for all that she has endured over the past 12 years. She, too, has survived and fights every day for her son.

"Moms always do," she said.

That January day

On Jan. 3, 1997, Carrie was 19 and working at Wal-Mart in Plaistow, N.H. In a statement written by Carrie and read at Elliott's sentencing, she told of how she played with Wayne that morning, smiling and laughing.

"We were as happy as can be" she wrote.

Then she left to go to work. Wayne stayed home with Elliott.

Carrie said her son was crying that day, something that often happened when Wayne was around his father. People would tell her to let him hold the baby, let him "get used to his father." But now she says, "Babies know who hurts them."

Looking back, she said, all the signs pointed to abuse. She took Wayne to the doctor's office several times in the first five months of his life for little bruises and once a broken blood vessel in the eye. In a later civil trial, an expert in the field of shaken baby syndrome would testify that these were all signs of abuse, Carrie said.

"(The doctor) never said anything. They just kept saying, 'Give him Tylenol,'" she said.

Carrie came home from work that night and crawled onto the couch. Through the baby monitor, she heard her son moaning. She asked Elliott to check on him, and he did. She heard more moans and went herself to check on Wayne. He was limp. His eyes were staring to the side. "He had no tone," she said.

Their phone had been shut off, so Carrie went to her father's work to call the doctor. A nurse practitioner said it sounded normal, but to bring him to the hospital in the morning if he showed no signs of improvement, she said.

But Carrie knew, "there was something definitely wrong."

Everything after that is a blur for Carrie. She took Wayne to Merrimack Valley Hospital the next morning, and he was rushed to Children's Hospital. Elliott stayed by her side, and she believed Wayne "was just sick."

But the police came and put the parents in separate rooms for questioning. Officers later came in and told her Elliott admitted he shook Wayne.

"I would never think he would do it, but I ran in there and just started asking him 'What did he do?' 'Why did he do it?'" she said. "It was the last I saw of him, and I never heard from him again."

A few weeks after arriving at Children's, Wayne was transferred to Franciscan Hospital in Brighton. It was shortly after his arrival there that news broke of another baby who had been shaken.

Little Matthew Eappen of Newton would soon become a household name, an 8-month-old victim of shaken baby syndrome. His English nanny, Louise Woodward, was eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter in a case that captured international media attention.

Until it happened to Wayne, Carrie had never heard of shaken baby syndrome. Now, she was hearing it in the news and thought of the hope she could give Matthew's parents.

"I was going to drive by because it was right down the street. I was right there," she said. "I could tell them there is hope like Wayne. But thankfully, I didn't. Matthew died."

Twelve years ago, Carrie said, not many people had heard of the dangers of shaking a baby. Today, she says, everyone should know.

"It still happens every day. I don't know how, especially today," she said. "They do know what will happen (if they shake a baby)."

In the ensuing years, Carrie would file suit against Wayne's doctor for his failure to report the signs of abuse. It was a case she would eventually lose, but it allowed her to hear the doctor on the stand and hear him admit he saw signs of abuse, such as finger-sized bruising and a broken blood vessel in his eye.

"To hear him say it, it was the time I cried the most. To hear that it could have been prevented," she said. "If I had known, I could have done something about it."

Still learning from Wayne

In Carrie's victim impact statement to the court, she wrote of a baby who loved applesauce and could "stand up in the walker and drag it along with him almost as if he didn't even need it. He was such a strong little guy.

"Wayne was a 5-month-old baby with so much going for him. With not a single thing wrong with him, nothing stopping him, he was gonna do it all," Carrie wrote. "Now I wake up by the beeping of Wayne's feeding pump. He used to be lying in the crib playing or crying. Now he's lying in the crib with his hand in his mouth gagging himself for stimulation. He doesn't know how to play, and he only has use of one hand. He doesn't cry for anything."

Not much has changed since that letter was written.

Wayne still requires constant care. Carrie says he has seizures daily, if not several times a day. Every night, a pump pushes liquid nourishment through a feeding tube in his belly. He is given 10 different medications a day. A nurse is always by his side in school, and he sees specialists in Boston on a routine basis. Pneumonia is always a concern because he of his physical limitations. He was hospitalized in December with pancreatitis caused by one his anti-seizure medications.

Wayne's medical bills are covered by MassHealth, for which the family pays $184 a month. He receives no disability or other financial help from the state. Carrie spends much time studying what is covered by insurance — everything from diaper rash cream to a high-sided bathtub she wants to install so Wayne won't fall out.

Carrie talks of all the medical procedures and knowledge she had to learn in a short amount of time to care for her son.

"He's (almost) 13, and I am still learning," she said.

How much Wayne is aware of his surroundings is unknown, but Carrie believes he is watching and listening. During this interview, she moved his chair a little farther away and put on the television to make sure he didn't hear her retell the story of what happened to him.

"Earmuffs for you," she said to him and tousled his hair.

Life soldiers on

With everything Carrie has had to deal with and remains to face, she is happy, if not a little tired. She is remarkably open about what she has gone through, and her triumphs and struggles. She has spoken at a few seminars for police, doctors and nurses about her experiences, and said she is always amazed at their response.

Carrie gushes about her husband, Rob, and how he helps with all of Wayne's needs, everything from changing him to bathing him to lifting him. She lovingly refers to Rob, Wayne and Thomas as "her boys" and talks about how she will often find them watching baseball games or Elmo on television together. She shows a picture of Rob and Wayne in his wheelchair taken by the Merrimack River. In it, Rob has his arm around Wayne, and together they hold a small striped bass they caught.

While Rob has been a blessing, she said finding someone to love after what happened to Wayne was never a priority.

"At first it was just me and Wayne, and I focused on learning Wayne. It got to be a journey," she said. "Maybe it's because of what happened to me, but it caused me to say, 'I'll have nothing or I'll have everything. And I'll be fine if it's just me and Wayne.'"

Carrie also relies on Cyndi Chase-Klavenieks, Wayne's one-on-one nurse, who is with him throughout the day at school and has been for the last 3 1/2 years. Finding the right person, someone who could come to understand and love Wayne, was a challenge.

Until she found Chase-Klavenieks, Wayne was absent more than he was in school. Simply, Carrie said, no one at the schools knew what do with Wayne and often overreacted to his condition.

But with Chase-Klavenieks, Carrie says Wayne is happy and "she gets him." She wrote her a thank-you letter this week.

"Wayne isn't the easiest little boy to understand. He's been misunderstood for so many years by so many people. His smiles have been mistaken for seizures. His frustrations have been mistaken for illness," Carrie wrote. "But you see his smiles for the glory that they are. You see him getting upset and you know just how to make him better. Something that no other could do, you do as if you've been there all along."

On Wednesday, Wayne was having a good day. In a special recliner chair Carrie found online for $500 and used this year's tax return money to buy, Wayne smiled a huge smile for a photographer as she snapped away.

Carrie and Chase-Klavenieks beamed, and remarked what a rare sight it was to see. Carrie pointed to a picture on the wall of a much younger Wayne — 7 or 8 years old, with a smile on his face — and said, "That's my favorite picture."

She then pointed to a photo of Wayne as a baby and then to one of her young son Thomas at about the same age. Both are giving big toothless grins.

"See, they look like the same kid," she said. She said Thomas hasn't shown much interest in his big brother yet because he can't play around, but she hopes that will change as Thomas gets older. She speaks of her young nephews, who are extremely close and good to Wayne.

Over the past 12 years, there have been a few times when she has thought about reaching out to Elliott to ask him "Why?" A victim witness advocate told her when she had those feelings to write a letter. She told Carrie to mail it if she still felt strongly.

Carrie said she's written a few letters, but has never sent any of them. She also thinks of the baby Elliott now has.

"(His family) has been given another gift, and they've taken that for granted," Carrie said. "(Elliott) took everything from Wayne. He doesn't know what he has."

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