"(Justin) also disclosed that the world is going to end in five years and that he has known this since World War III started on September 11, 2001." As Justin continued to roll up intellectual feats and acclaim, there were unmistakable signs that all was not well. Four months after administering the IQ test to Justin, Silverman received an e-mail message in Denver from Charlene Kociuba, Chapman's neighbor in a subsidized housing complex in Penfield, a suburb of Rochester. Kociuba warned Silverman that Justin "is only loved for the monetary gain, prestige and power he can bring to his mother. "He cannot play unless he works, he cannot laugh unless she approves, he must be first to get the 'highest IQ', swim the fastest, is the first to enroll in college, be the youngest to graduate HS, be the first syndicated columnist and test the highest in all your hundreds of tests she brags about." Kociuba said Chapman prepared Justin for days for the IQ test with Silverman. She accused Chapman of pulling information off the Internet, "perhaps the very tests you use." A quick search on eBay offered a 1960 test book with all the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (Form L-M) answers for $5. When contacted by telephone, Kociuba described herself as a photographer and rehabilitation counselor, and as a former Chapman friend. "The biggest fear I have is that unless he's gifted, she will not accept him. He's deathly afraid of losing her love." At one point, according to New York state records, Child Protective Services visited the Chapman home in Penfield. On Oct. 17, 2000, the agency issued a statement saying allegations of "suspected child abuse or maltreatment" were "unfounded." It's unclear who filed the complaint that led to the investigation. During that investigation, Silverman defended Chapman in a letter to the New York agency. "(Justin) is clearly a happy, loved, well-adjusted little boy," she wrote. "He begs to take 12 college courses at once since they all sound so interesting to him. Justin is pushing Elizabeth; she is definitely not pushing him." Chapman, in an interview with the News, dismissed Kociuba as a jealous mother. She said Kociuba was particularly upset that her 16-year-old son, a gifted student also taking courses at the University of Rochester, failed a class in which Justin received a B. Chapman and her son moved to Colorado in August, in part to be closer to the Center for Inner Change in Cherry Creek, where Justin was receiving treatment for his auditory processing problem. Chapman said her son couldn't understand words spoken into his right ear. With Silverman's assistance, Chapman sought help from Ron Minson, the director of the center. Minson's alternative therapy is based on The Tomatis Method, a 50-year-old sound therapy program that uses hearing exercises to help patients better process the sequence of sounds and tones. Minson says that the technique, while not mainstream, can help children overcome learning disabilities without medication. Justin visited Minson's office to have his right ear stimulated. During an August visit, Justin listened to music on the headphones in a room with other children. He was playing with plastic dinosaurs. In a smaller room, he underwent light and sound therapy as he reclined on a soft chair with lights flashing inside special eyeglasses. Not long after the treatment started -- about a year after the phenomenal IQ test -- Justin began to regress, Chapman said. She said he began acting like a 2-year-old. Before that, Chapman said, Justin was a dedicated vegan who thrived on a few hours sleep every night. Suddenly, the 7-year-old was eating meat and giving up his late-night e-mail exchanges. He was sleeping late. His photographic memory disappeared. He started sucking on his finger. Instead of science kits and Legos, Justin played with toddler toys, his mother said. In early June, when the family still was commuting to Denver from New York, Justin began keeping a journal to track the effects of the Tomatis program, which he himself had discovered on the Internet, according to his mother. Two weeks after Justin started the listening program, he wrote, in pages offered for viewing by his mother: "I am now Joe. I am nothing like the Justin I read about. Hard to believe I wrote those things so I must be someone new -- so gave new name to myself." Two days later, he wrote: "I cannot find Justin? Have you seen him? Please help me this does not feel right. I cannot think at all. Acting stupid. I need to do better. So what -- I can hear -- too noisy cannot see words."In the fall, Chapman enrolled Justin in the Brideun School for Exceptional Children in Broomfield. The private school, which opened last year, caters to gifted children with learning disabilities. As the school year progressed, Justin began throwing temper tantrums, kicking a hole in a school wall and becoming increasingly convinced the world was going to end five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to his mother. In October, Justin told a social worker at Brideun that he "didn't want to live anymore." At the time, his abilities ranged from second- to 12th-grade levels, according to a letter from school director Marlo Payne Rice. Despite Justin's apparently deteriorating mental state, Chapman took him to the National Association for Gifted Children's national conference Nov. 7-11 in Cincinnati. Justin gave a presentation. "He put together a presentation two weeks before," Chapman said. "We were hemming and hawing about doing it at all." In the end, Chapman decided it would be a safe environment for her son because Silverman and other friends would be there. Piechowski, professor emeritus of education and psychology at Northland College in Ashland, Wis., recalled that Justin seemed "lively and full of fun." "He was happy to be with people who accepted him and understood him. He was happy to see again his gifted friends, his true peers."
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