Teen gets 20 years in 7-year-old’s death
Few legal options when kids commit adult crimes
MANITOWOC - A teenager was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison for putting his 7-year-old foster brother through an hour of torturous punishment that eventually killed the boy.
Damian Hauschultz, now 17 and living in Mishicot, had pleaded guilty in Manitowoc County Circuit Court June 25 to reckless homicide. Damian, who was 14 at the time of the death, was accused of causing head trauma, a broken rib and other injuries in April 2018 to foster brother Ethan Hauschultz.
Six other felony counts against Damian — three of child abuse/intentionally causing harm and three of substantial battery intending bodily harm — were dismissed.
In addition to prison, he was sentenced to 10 years of probation.
Ethan’s mother, Andrea Everett, fought tears as she spoke in court and called for a lengthy sentence for Damian. Prosecutors had recommended 17 years in prison.
“Sitting before us is not a child. Damian made an adult decision that day,” Everett said. “The only way I can visit my son is look at a box with his ashes.”
The questions of whether prison is the right answer for someone whose brain was far from fully developed at the time of the crime has hung over the case.
People who advocate for children accused of serious violent crimes say they should not be treated simply as miniadults, and that putting a teenager in prison for years accomplishes little other than keeping a person out of society during his young adulthood.
“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 Philadelphiabased 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.
In Waukesha in 2014, two 12-year-old girls stabbed a third girl, Peyton Leutner, 19 times in an effort to win favor from Slender Man, a fictional character they’d become convinced was real. The victim managed to crawl to a nearby road and was rescued. Her attackers were charged as adults: Morgan Geyser with attempted first-degree homicide; Annissa Weier with attempted seconddegree homicide.
In July, a judge ordered Weier, now 19, released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute where she’d begun a 25-year sentence. Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren gave state officials 60 days to draw up a release plan and required that health officials track Weier’s progress until she’s 37.
Geyser was acquitted of criminal charges but sentenced to 40 years to life in a mental facility.
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.
Forced to carry a heavy log in circles
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 admitted to police who interviewed him that he had very few problems with schoolmates, as long as he could make them afraid of him. Despite his age, he was already 5 feet, 11 inches and nearly 170 pounds.
Damian had told Manitowoc County sheriff ’s detectives that his adoptive father, Timothy, had placed him in charge of punishing Ethan for talking back to a teacher at a Manitowoc elementary school. He said he punished the boy the same way Timothy Hauschultz had disciplined him for failing to memorize Bible verses — by making him carry a heavy log in circles in the lawn. He also whipped Ethan and then buried him in snow when he collapsed from exhaustion.
Timothy and Tina McKeever-Hauschultz went shopping in Manitowoc while the punishment took place, according to court files.
Timothy Hauschultz, 51, faces trial on charges of felony murder as well as five other felonies and two misdemeanor battery charges. He is being held in the Door County Jail and has turned down multiple plea offers from District Attorney Jaclyn LaBre, court records show. His criminal record includes a 2009 conviction for child abuse that was later reduced to disorderly conduct.
Damian becomes the second member of his family that Manitowoc County Judge Jerilyn Dietz sentenced to prison in connection with Ethan’s death.
Damian’ s mother, Tina McKe ever H au schultz, pleaded guilty in March to two felonies: childabuse/failure to prevent great harm and failure to prevent mental harm to a child.
Dietz sentenced McKeever-Hauschultz to five years in prison, with credit for the 770 days she had already served in a local jail. After release, she will serve five years on probation.
Damian, who has been free on $100,000 bail and living with a relative in Mishicot since the spring of 2020, declined a chance to speak for himself in court on Thursday. His uncle, Robert Echlin, spoke on his behalf and said Damian’s life was like “living under Hitler” once his mother married Timothy Hauschultz.
His adoptive father is scheduled to go to trial in Manitowoc in early December on charges of felony murder, three counts of child abuse, two other felony counts, and two misdemeanor battery counts related to Ethan’s death.
Young prisoners don’t do well initially
Both Republican state Sen. Jerry Petrowski and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers have concluded that too many young people are being handled by Wisconsin’s adult criminal justice system.
Evers and Petrowski, who represents a district in the Wausau area, have tried to require that 17-yearolds be charged in the juvenile system for all but the most serious crimes. Evers included money in his proposed budget this year to go along with making 18 the minimum age for adult court, but it didn’t survive cuts by the state Legislature.
Those efforts would not have helped Damian, anyway. The law would still allow cases with such violence to be waived into adult court even for a 14year-old.
And so, at an age when most people are thinking about senior year in high school, first year in college, starting a career, completing basic training, or perhaps finding an apartment, Damian Hauschultz, who turns 18 in mid-November, is looking at spending more years in prison than he has been alive.
Michael Caldwell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison senior lecturer in psychology and an expert on juvenile delinquency, said the early weeks as the newest person in the prison can be extremely intimidating. The new person must learn the many rules that Caldwell acknowledges sometimes make little sense, and try to find an older inmate who will explain how to do things like ask for an extra blanket in a way that won’t anger a corrections officer or fellow inmate.
The new inmate could lie around like an unemployed teenager or pursue some form of personal growth. He could sign up to learn a trade — he’d likely have to wait a couple years for a spot to open — or complete high school.
“Most young people who go to prison don’t do well initially,” said Caldwell, whose work includes study of the brain development of juvenile delinquents. “They struggle with what they’re facing. … They need to determine what they’re willing to take advantage of. “Your inmate will need to come to grips with what he wants his life to be. And not just descend into bitterness for spending much of his life in prison.”