Is prison the right answer for someone like Damian Hauschultz?
People who advocate for children accused of serious violent crimes say they should not be treated simply as mini-adults, and that putting a teenager in prison for years accomplishes little other than keeping a person out of society during his young adulthood.
Experts in adolescent psychology, while acknowledging the seriousness of a crime that killed a 7-year-old, say there must be better ways to treat an offender whose brain was far from fully developed at the time of the crime.
The assault that eventually killed Ethan was something an adult was capable of doing. But experts say the person who had delivered the punishment that day, 14-year-old Damian, was emotionally still a child.
"It's really striking that this happened when he was" an early teen, said Marsha Levick, chief legal officer at the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia-based national advocacy group that promotes rights, dignity, equity and opportunity for children. The group has done work in Wisconsin as part of the ongoing effort to close Lincoln Hills, the
state's problem-plagued juvenile facility north of Wausau, and replace it with smaller facilities.
Levick said it's difficult to understand how people in the justice system think an early teenager could be held to the same legal standards as an adult. At the time of Ethan's death, she said, Damian was "still developing as a human being.
"He's a kid," she said. "He's not mature. He can't make decisions about his conduct."
Yet it's not unheard-of for a child so young to face adult charges if they've played a role in an incident where someone was killed or seriously maimed. Cases like Damian's pop up in state after state.
In Wisconsin, 276 juvenile cases were waived into adult court from 2018 to 2020. And one nationally known case involving middle-school age perpetrators happened in the state.
Wisconsin law requires 17-year-olds charged with crimes to be tried as adults. Children 14 and older charged with murder and certain other violent crimes can be waived into adult court and often are. Children as young as 10 can face adult court if charged with first- or second-degree intentional homicide, as well as first-degree attempted or first-degree reckless homicide.
In deciding how to charge Damian, authorities in Manitowoc County weighed not just the brutality of the way he treated Ethan, but also his nature as a teenager.
Damian Hauschultz admitted to police who interviewed him that he had very few problems with schoolmates, as long as he could make them afraid of him. And the 14-year-old Damian who met with Manitowoc County detectives after Ethan's killing was quickly approaching man-size: 5 feet, 11 inches tall and nearly 170 pounds.
When Damian was chosen to oversee Ethan's punishment, Manitowoc County Court records show Damian was familiar with what his adoptive dad, Tim Hauschultz, called "carrying wood." Damian had been made to carry wood for breaking a house rule.
But Judge Jerilyn Dietz need not follow that recommendation, and she could impose a harsher sentence. Earlier this year, Dietz nearly doubled the 2.5 years that Damian's mother, Tina, had already served in the county jail for failing to report that children in her house were abuse victims. That was after prosecutors agreed they would not object if the woman was released immediately.
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