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Fatherhood: A Life Sentence

Fatherhood: A Life Sentence

 

                Infant screams could be heard from down the hall at St. Joseph’s Hospital West in Lake St. Louis on February 6th, 1992. Jennifer Jackson rushed back to her infant son’s room. She had only been gone for a few minutes, stepping out briefly to the cafeteria, leaving him with his father. When she returned, she found the boy in his father’s arm hysterical and unconsolable. She wrapped her son in her arms and tried to comfort him, but this was a cry she had never heard before. Something had gone terribly wrong in the last few minutes. Little did she know at that time, this was the start of a nightmare for both her and her son.

                In May of 1990, Jennifer met Brian Stewart while the two were both training as medics at a military training facility in Missouri. The two began a whirlwind romance and soon moved in together. The romance was strong and they moved in together quickly. By July of 1990, Jennifer found out she was pregnant. At some point, Brian was sent to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Storm.

                Brian was angry when he learned of the pregnancy. He told Jennifer he could not possibly be the father of her child because he is unable to have children. In December of 1990, while she was still pregnant, he showed up at Jennifer’s home with a syringe, needle, and tourniquet and threatened to kill himself by injecting himself with an air embolism. At this point, he was working as either a medic or phlebotomist. He did not follow through with this threat.

                Jennifer gave birth to Brian Stewart Jr on 2/24/1991. Brian Sr. did not come to see the baby. In fact, he did not see the child for the first three months of the child’s life. When he first met his son, he denied paternity once more. There are some photographs of Brian with the baby indicating that at some points in time, he at least held the child, but it’s unclear whether he ever accepted responsibility for the child. The relationship between Brian Sr. and Jennifer turned mostly abusive, at least verbally and mentally.

                In May, June, and July of 1991, Brian Jr. was part of a vaccination study as part of his regular pediatric care in which he was found to be in perfect health. He was a happy, healthy baby. The following winter, however, he did get sick. In February of 1992, he had a respiratory illness and was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital West in Lake St. Louis for Asthma and Pneumonia. He was admitted on February 2nd, 1992. Jennifer contacted Brian Sr., although he hadn’t seen his son in several months. He didn’t come to the hospital until the day that Brian was expected to be discharged, February 6th, 1992.

                Brian Stewart Sr. was born on October 30th, 1966. By 1992, He was living in Columbia, Illinois and working as a phlebotomist at Barnes Jewish Hospital. He had previously served in the military in Operation Desert Storm, claiming to have PTSD from serving in Saudia Arabia. His co-workers claimed that when people would aggravate Brian, he would make comments that he had access to blood with infectious agents in it and could inject others with it.

                On the afternoon of February 6th, 1992, Jennifer was surprised with Brian showed up to see his son at the hospital. Oddly, he brought his deep-pocketed lab coat. Brian noticed stitches on the baby’s head and asked his mother about them. When Jennifer explained they were being removed soon, Brian told her that they baby’s appearance would not be perfect so “he wouldn’t be worth having”. Brian then told Jennifer to go ahead and go to the cafeteria and get a drink and take a break. Reluctantly, she agreed, leaving her son with his father. When she returned, her son was hysterical and it was clear that something had gone terribly wrong.

                The eleven-month old’s pulse and temperature were suddenly elevated, where he was previously stable and ready for discharge. The painful cry was one his mother had not heard before. The hospital staff scrambled to explain what had gone wrong. Brian Stewart Sr. promptly left, leaving Jennifer to handle the issue with their child. Baby Brian was transferred to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. Finally, Brian Jr. was stabilized, but a diagnosis wasn’t clearly made.

                Over the next several years, Brian Jr. kept getting sick, but only mom was around to care for him. Brian Stewart hid his location and repeatedly denied paternity to avoid paying for child support. Paternity tests eventually provided he was, in fact, the father of the child. He was ordered to pay $267 per month in support, but he made every effort to avoid responsibility for his child. He made comments like, “I told you that when I leave, I’m going to leave for good and I’m not going to leave any loose ends or ties behind” and “You won’t need to look me up for child support anyway because your child is not going to live that long” and “I just know that he is not going to live to the age of five”.

In April 1996, at age seven, he was hospitalized with frequent fevers, vomiting, unexplained weight loss, lethargy, leg pain, and mononucleosis. His pediatrician, Dr. Linda Steele-Green, struggled to make a diagnosis for the seven-year-old. It finally came to the doctor in the middle of the night. She connected the dots with the incident in 1992, the odd statements made by the father, and the symptoms of the child. She requested that Brian be tested for HIV. The child tested positive for HIV and was also diagnosed with full blown AIDS.

The HIV virus is a bloodborne virus. It was allegedly injected into the baby’s blood stream that February day by his father, who had access to HIV tainted blood samples through his job at Barnes Jewish Hospital as a phlebotomist. Once infected, the virus attacked the child’s immune system. Once Brian’s immune system was effectively destroyed to a certain point, the virus caused acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, the late stage of HIV infection. Brian was given five to six months to live.

Brian Stewart was charged with first-degree assault on April 8th, 1998, which apparently carried a harsher sentence than attempted murder. While the case was largely circumstantial, Brian’s own comments to Jennifer and others about his son not living long, being able to infect others with infected blood who wronged him, and his extreme avoidance of child support worked against him. Not to mention, he had never once visited his son since February 6th, 1992.

The defense suggested that his maternal aunt was an intravenous drug user and could have caused the child to be infected. The aunt tested negative for HIV. The child was also examined for any possible signs of sexual abuse, for which there were none. All family members and people with access to the child were also tested for HIV to rule out those possibilities- they were all negative.

On December 6th, 1998, A Missouri jury found Brain Stewart guilty of first-degree assault. His attorney disagreed strongly with the conviction, stating “Mom made an allegation, and everyone ran with it”. On January 9th, 1999, Stewart was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. The judge said, “Injecting a child with the HIV virus really puts you in the same category as the worst war criminal and when God finally calls you, you are going to burn in hell from here to eternity” (Wikipedia).

Despite the death sentence the child was given, he persevered. Medicine has advanced leaps and bounds in the field of HIV/AIDS and now he, who has changed his name to Bryyan Jackson, is thriving. He still has HIV but his T4 counts are nearly undetectable. This means he has a very small chance of even being able to pass the virus on to someone else. Bryyan must be vigilant about his health, but he is now a healthy man in his thirties working as a motivational speaker and thinking about fatherhood himself.

Brian Stewart, in the meantime, has spent his life in prison. Fatherhood has been a life sentence for him. He became eligible for parole in 2011, but it has been denied each time. Bryyan Jackson has spoken at parole hearings, explaining the pain of ongoing medical treatments, infections, bullying and harassment, and unfortunate stigma that he has struggled with throughout his life because of his father’s choices. Brian Stewart is not a father; however, he lost the right to call himself that. He is simply a sperm donor at this point. His manipulative tactics to avoid fatherhood caused him to literally have a life sentence- in prison.

 

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